"Well, there was room for it," commented Fletcher, as he glanced indifferently at the picture and laid it down. "Get Will's clothes packed to-day, remember. He starts off tomorrow morning, rain or shine." Pushing back his chair, he paused to gulp a last swallow of coffee, and then stamped heavily from the room. At dinner Will did not appear, and when at last the supper bell jangled in the hall and Fletcher strode in to find the boy's place still empty, the shadow upon his brow grew positively black. As they rose from the table there were brisk, light steps along the hall, and Will entered hurriedly, warm and dusty after the day's hunt. Catching sight of his grandfather, he started nervously, and the boyish animation he had brought in from the fields faded quickly from his face, which took on a sly and dogged look. "Whar in the devil's name have you been, suh?" demanded Fletcher bluntly. The boy hesitated, seeking the inevitable defenses of the weak pitted against the strong. "I've been teaching my hounds to hunt rabbits," he replied, after a moment. "Zebbadee was with me." "So you were too sick to start for school this morning, eh?" pursued Fletcher, hurt and angry. "Only well enough to go traipsing through the bushes after a pack of brutes?" "I had a headache, but it got better. May I go up now to wash my hands?" For an instant Fletcher regarded him in a brooding silence; then, with that remorseless cruelty which is the strangest manifestation of wounded love, he loosened upon the boy's head all the violence of his smothered wrath. "You'll do nothing of the kind! I ain't done with you yet, and when I am I reckon you will know it. Mark my words, if you warn't such a girlish looking chap I'd take my horsewhip to your shoulders in a jiffy. So this is the return I get, is it, for all my trouble with you since the day you were born! Tricks and lies are all the reward I'm to expect, I reckon. Well, you'll learn-- once for all, now--that when you undertake to fool me it's a clear waste of time. I've found out whar you've been to-day, and I know you've been sneaking across the county with that darn Blake!" The boy looked at him steadily, first with speechless terror, then with a cowed and sullen rage. The glare in Fletcher's eyes fascinated him, and he stood motionless on his spot of carpet as if he were held there in an invisible vise. Weakling as he was, he had been humoured too long to bear the lash submissively at last, and beneath the tumult of words that overwhelmed him he felt his anger flow like an infusion of courage in his veins. The greater share of love was still on his grandfather's side, and the knowledge of this lent a sullen defiance to his voice. "You bluster so I can't hear," he said, blinking fast to shut out the other's eyes. "If I did go with Christopher Blake, what's the harm in it? I only lied because you make such a fuss it gives me a headache."