He went out of the room to seek the child--the pleasant parlour, with its wainscotted walls and low timbered ceiling, which would always thenceforth be associated in Brion’s mind with a dream of peace and security--and returned in a little, downcast and sorrowful, holding him by the hand. He had evidently, in that brief interval, broken the fatal news. The boy seemed dazed and stunned; but he lifted his head manfully to look the stranger in the face. He did not recall him: how could he, who had seen him but once before? yet he read enough there to recognise the finality of his sentence. And Bagott, for his part, perceived a girlish-faced youngster, slim and tall for his age, with fair hair and mouse-coloured eyebrows and lashes--personable material, but giving so far no indication of the sort of spirit which informed it. The boy was very pale, but whether by nature or through agitation he could not tell. ‘Dost know me, child?’ he said--not unkindly, though his voice was harsh. Brion shook his head. ‘No, Sir.’ ‘Troth,’ said the visitor, ‘eleven years may well wipe out deeper-graven memories than that. I am thy uncle, Quentin Bagott, child, who brought thee here, and am now to take thee hence. Wilt go with me?’ The boy had to bite his lip to restrain his tears; yet he kept them proudly back; and that the other noticed. For all at once he sighed, raising his head and bowing it; and when he spoke his voice was grievous. ‘Brion,’ said he; ‘of all of ours, we are the only two left to one another.’ There spoke the broken soul, grasping in its fall at a child’s hand where it would have flung away a man’s. And, in some rare way, the lad understood. For he came forward, holding his head erect; and said he: ‘I will go with you.’ Bagott took the young face between his palms, and gazed searchingly into the gray eyes. ‘Ay,’ said he--‘ay, she’s there----’ and, looking over his head, ‘a tall slip, minister,’ says he, ‘and as fair informed within, I trow, as his looks are telling. He credits you, i’faith.’ ‘Sir,’ said the pedagogue, ‘we claim to have done naught by him but after our nature and the terms of the bond, for which he hath repaid us, in his love and duty, a thousandfold. For the rest I have asked no questions and sought no knowledge--no, not even of your relationship, which appears to me now for the first time; no, not even of why, on that first evening, you demanded of my fear what my humanity would not have dreamed to deny you. Take him; he deserves the best; I can say no more--save that we shall miss him sorely. What day will it please you that he leaves us?’