For a second or two the child was quite still, nothing but the black eyes and tossed masses of hair showing above the sheet. Then the eyes blinked suddenly, and flinging out her hand at him with a passionate gesture, as though to push him away, she turned on her face and drew the bedclothes over her head. 'Louie!' he said--'Louie!' But she made no sign, and, at last, with a grotesquely concerned face, he went out of the room and downstairs, hanging his head. Out of doors, he found David already at work in the cowhouse, but as surly and uncommunicative as before when he was spoken to. That the lad had turned 'agen his wark,' and was on his way to hate the farm and all it contained, was plain even to Reuben. Why was he so glum and silent--why didn't he speak up? Perhaps he would, Reuben's conscience replied, if it were conveyed to him that he possessed a substantial portion of six hundred pounds! The boy knew that his uncle watched him--anxiously, as one watches something explosive and incalculable--and felt a sort of contempt for himself that nothing practical came of his own revolt and discontent. But he was torn with indecision. How to leave Louie--what to do with himself without a farthing in the world--whom to go to for advice? He thought often of Mr. Ancrum, but a fierce distaste for chapels and ministers had been growing on him, and he had gradually seen less and less of the man who had been the kind comrade and teacher of his early childhood. His only real companions during this year of moody adolescence were his books. From the forgotten deposit in the old meal-ark upstairs, which had yielded 'Paradise Lost,' he drew other treasures by degrees. He found there, in all, some tattered leaves--three or four books altogether--of Pope's 'Iliad,' about half of Foxe's 'Martyrs'--the rest having been used apparently by the casual nurses, who came to tend Reuben's poor mother in her last days, to light the fire--a complete copy of Locke 'On the Human Understanding,' and various volumes of old Calvinist sermons, which he read, partly because his reading appetite was insatiable, partly from a half-contemptuous desire to find out what it might be that Uncle Reuben was always troubling his head about. As to 'Lias Dawson, David saw nothing of him for many long weeks after the scene which had led to the adventure of the Pool. He heard only that 'Lias was 'bad,' and mostly in his bed, and feeling a little guilty, he hardly knew why, the lad kept away from his old friend. Summer and the early autumn passed away. October brought a spell of wintry weather; and one day, as he was bringing the sheep home, he met old Margaret, 'Lias's wife. She stopped and accosted him. 'Why doan't yo coom and see 'Lias sometimes, Davy, my lad? Yo might leeten him up a bit, an' he wants it, t' Lord knows. He's been fearfu' bad in his sperrits this summer.'