When I looked up again, the tears were raining down her face, Master Caleb's eyes were shaded by his hand, and Mrs. Janet was in the window, standing with her back to us. * * * * * They say that to every cloud there is a silver lining. I was very sure that there were clouds on my horizon, but not quite so certain about the silver lining. If there was one at all, it must have been Jock Clifford. For when you are in trouble there is a great deal of comfort to be got out of a child's affection. In those days, after Matt Clifford had received my answer to his question in cold silence--when Martha would not let Hildred go near our house, and had forbidden her, as nearly as she could, to speak to me--when my father never opened his lips but to complain of me, I fell back with a singular feeling of refreshment and consolation, on my one staunch friend Jock. He had been my shadow ever since, some nine or ten years ago, he began to stand alone on his sturdy little legs. Robin and Walter, his twin elder brothers, had no time to notice him. They were absorbed in a never-ending struggle, which of them should have the upper hand--a struggle that had begun as long ago as when, two red-faced babies, they lay heads and tails in the same cradle. It never seemed likely to be settled in their life-time, and it made them very quarrelsome, and quite inseparable. So Jock, left to himself, bestowed all his company upon me. When one is in disgrace with well nigh all the world--and very few people made up 'all the world' to me,--it is at all events something to have a friend left, in whose eyes the idea of your doing anything wrong is a matter of simple impossibility--it is something, even though the friend be only eleven years old. Jock was no half-hearted champion. He had found that he could make his mother pinch up her lips and raise her eyebrows, merely by praising me. So he talked of me incessantly, partly for love of me, and partly to use this his newly-gotten power. He was somewhat pleased too, only half offended, at Aunt Hildred frequently giving him kisses and lumps of barley sugar, behind the door. Knowing that I was not very welcome to any one else, I fell, in my down-heartedness, rather an easy prey to Jock's overflowing life and glee, and he led me hither and thither, that spring, pretty nearly as he would. Neither work nor play came amiss to him. Ratting, rook-shooting and rabbit-snaring Jock's soul delighted in--most of all, perhaps, helping me to fish the trout stream that ran under the Castle walls.