'How could it be your fault?' I said sadly; 'you could not help it.' 'Oh! I am glad you think that. I wanted you to come back, that I might see you again, and thank you for being kind to us that day. And I wanted to say good-bye before I go away.' He held out his hand. 'Going away?' I said, taking it, and looking up at him, for he was rather older and taller than I was, 'are you going away? Where to?' 'I don't quite know; father's friends were all dead and gone when we got home to England.' His lip trembled, and there was a shadow of trouble on his brave bright face. 'Why do you go away, Cuthbert?' 'I suppose I must not stay here always,' he said simply. 'But you may: haven't you heard? My mother said you were to be my brother.' Cuthbert looked up eagerly, and the colour came into his face. 'But your father.' 'Wait for me here a minute.' I found my father chopping up logs of wood in the wood-shed. 'Father, Cuthbert Franklyn says he must go away.' I had to repeat this twice before I could make him hear; when he did, he only said, 'Well.' 'But father, he needn't go.' 'Where is it he wants to go to?' 'He doesn't know; he thinks he isn't to stay here always; you won't let him go, father?' My father took the hatchet up again. 'It's no business of mine; I've no call to stop him if he wants to go.' 'He doesn't want to go; he has got no home, and mother said he was to be my brother.' 'I don't know how that may be,' my father said slowly. I was thunderstruck. 'But mother said so, and you promised, father.' He looked at me. 'I made some sort of a promise may be, as I would have promised anything then, to keep her quiet.' He sighed, and drew the back of his hand across his eyes--the only outward sign of sorrow I ever saw him give. 'Then Cuthbert may stay.' My father made a few strokes at the wood without answering. At last he said, 'Look you, Willie; it's a great deal to ask of a poor man.' 'Are you very poor, father?' He stopped a minute. 'They call me close, but I reckon there's not many of them would do a thing like this; it's too much to expect.' 'For mother's sake,'--I felt, rather than knew, that this was my best chance. 'You let me alone!' he said roughly. I waited with my eyes fixed upon him, for two or three minutes. He went on with his work; then came a sort of short laugh. 'They preach so much to me about being good to you: why am I to take in another mouth to feed?--a great growing lad too, that'll take the bread out of your mouth, most likely.' 'Oh, father!' 'Be still; can't you? I hate to see the boy about the place. He's brought nought but bad luck to me and mine.' I thought of Cuthbert waiting for me; I thought of mother's charge to me, so solemnly given and received. I was almost in despair. If I had understood my father better, I might have guessed that he would say less had he been entirely decided and at ease in his own mind. 'A promise such as that binds no one,' he muttered presently.