Another long five minutes passed--log after log of wood was cut and thrown aside. My hope was almost gone, when suddenly my father laid down the hatchet and turned round. 'See you here, boy; it'll be the worse for you if I do this; you'll have to fare rougher, and there'll be less for you to get. You'll have to be content without so much schooling, and you must work harder.' 'Oh, I don't care, I don't care!' 'Humph.' 'Then Cuthbert needn't go?' 'Have it your own way.' 'But he may stop with us?' 'I suppose he'll have to, leastways as long as he behaves himself.' I hardly waited to hear him to the end, or to thank him. I dashed out of the wood-shed. Cuthbert had not moved from where I left him. He was watching for me eagerly. 'It's all right,' I shouted, rushing up to him; you're to stay and be my brother.' He drew a quick breath, with a half-uttered 'oh,' and then, seeing my gladness, he began to smile. And so my coming home was not all sad. * * * * * The good my mother meant to do to the orphan boy was returned in tenfold blessing to her own child. Truly as brothers--more than as brothers, if it might be--Cuthbert Franklyn and I came to love each other. He who had never had a home before, got to be at home with us. It was very pleasant to him, though to me it seemed all changed and dreary. Hitherto his life had been a wandering one, following his father's regiment wherever it went. He was not born in England, but in the Island of Malta, and sometimes, when the sky was very blue, he said it recalled to him a brighter sky still, which he remembered dimly, and tall white buildings, and stairs that he thought went right down into the sea. There were sounds of bells and guns, he said, and a vision of some great ships. That was all he recollected of his birth-place. His mother had died there, and another soldier's wife had taken care of him. They went from place to place, sometimes taking long voyages across the sea, until his father became ill and got his discharge. When he came back to England he tried to find his relations, but his parents and his only sister were dead. He was forgotten, and could find no one to befriend his son. Cuthbert scarcely knew where his father had meant to go, when the fever came upon him. That was all he could tell us about himself; only there was no life like a soldier's, Cuthbert said, with sparkling eyes. He was always whistling the gay tunes that their band used to play, and imitating the bugle-calls that he had known all his life long. My father scarcely ever noticed Cuthbert. To the end I do not think he grew really to like him; but his word once given, he would not go back upon it. In time I almost forgot, and so I think did Cuthbert himself, that he did not belong to the place as much as I did.