This was half real, on Joan’s part, and half put on to calm her brother down; but in that part of her intention she was not very successful. After a while she really did as she had threatened, and fell into a sound, if uneasy, sleep. But Harry had no inclination that way. He sat and pondered over all his wrongs, and as he mused the fire burned. What was home to him?--nothing. A place where there was no peace--a pandemonium--and when there was either quarrelling or dulness--dulness beyond description; either a fight with his father or a drowse by his mother’s side--that was all the comfort he had of his home. And after all, when he put the question to himself, and nobody else interfered, he was obliged to allow that the entertainment at the “Red Lion” was not of a very exciting character. There was not much in that to make up for the want of everything else. He sat upon the edge of the copper dangling his legs, and, notwithstanding that warmth, the chill of the night got into his heart. He had no overcoat, as his mother had remembered, when he went out; and as the slow moments passed on, the night became intolerable to Harry, and the sense that his enemy, his father, was chuckling in the warmth upstairs over his outcast condition, distracted him with impotent rage. Never again would he subject himself to such a shame. He clenched his fist and made a vow within himself, while Joan, leaning her head against him, slumbered uneasily. After a while Joan had a little shock in her sleep, half woke, and felt her pillow displaced, and dreaming, not knowing where she was, threw herself back against the copper and settled down somehow again. She dreamt there had been an earthquake, and that the copper itself was a volcano and had made an eruption and tumbled down upon her, catching her fast by the feet. A little after, poor Mrs. Joscelyn, lying awake crying silently and saying her prayers over and over again, heard a handful of gravel flung violently against her window and the sound of footsteps. What did it mean? The tyrant had gone to sleep a few minutes before, and he slept heavily. She crept out of bed with a sinking heart, and after a great deal of alarmed searching found the keys, of her own room first, and then of the doors below. She did not even turn to find something to cover her, but fled downstairs, like a ghost, with her naked feet and a wild flutter in her heart. When she made her way with some difficulty to the place where her children had found refuge, she came just in time to deliver Joan, who had almost broken her neck in her struggles to get out of the way of the earthquake, and was lying, with her head back and her mouth open, among the tubs. Though she was conscious of being in some convulsion of nature it was not easy to wake Joan, and there was no one else to be seen. Mrs. Joscelyn, with her candle in her hand, went searching into every corner while her daughter picked herself up.