"I reckon you know, sir, how it all come about. There’ll ha’ been plenty o’ folk ready to tell you, I’ll be bound, and them as knowed least’ll likely ha’ tellt you most. We never had but the one lad, Sarah and me, and, by Gox! but he was a limb! The queer thing was that my brother Will’s eldest should ha’ been the very marrow o’ mine,--looks, voice, ways, ay, and character an’ all. Will and me were whyet enough lads, I’m sure; it was terble strange we should breed a pair o’ rattlehorns like yon. You couldn’t rightly say there was any harm to ’em, but they were that wick they mun always be making a stir. Being that like, too, helped ’em rarely when there was chanst o’ their getting catched. Each on ’em had a call for telling when he was about. Jim’s was a heron like, but Geordie’s was nobbut a gull----" This time it was his own glance that went to the window, as again he remembered the bird gone out to the waves. When Dent spoke, his mind came back from its flight with a tiny jerk. "Then they made off to Canada, didn’t they, the two lads? You told me something about it when I first came." "Ay, they cleared off in a night without a word or owt, and they’ve never done no good from then to this. Sarah sticks to it Geordie would never ha’ gone at all if it hadn’t been for Jim, and Will’s missis sticks to it t’other way about. I reckon there was nowt to choose between ’em myself, but my missis never could abide poor Jim. He was that set on her, though, there was no keeping him off the spot. Right cruel she was to him sometimes, but she couldn’t drive him off. He’d just make off laughing and whistling, and turn up again next day. Of course, she was bound to have her knife into him, for his mother’s sake. She and Eliza have always been fit to scratch at each other all their lives." "Long enough to finish any feud, surely, and a bit over? It’s a pity they can’t bury the hatchet and make friends."