The town was dripping at its eaves and glucking full of waters at rone-mouths and syvers when he got into it after his disgraceful retreat He was alone in the street as he walked through it, a wet woebegone figure with a jacket-collar high up to the ears to meet the nip of the elements. Donacha Breck, leaning over his counter and moodily looking at the hens sheltering their wind-blown feathers under his barrow, saw him pass and threw over his shoulder to his wife behind a comment upon the eccentricity of the Paymaster’s boy.

“He’s scarcely all there,” said he, “by the look of him. He’s wandering about in the rah as if it was a fine summer day and the sun shining.”

Crossing from the school to his lodging, an arm occupied by a great bundle of books, the other contending with an umbrella, was the dominie, and he started at the sight of his errant pupil who nearly ran against him before his presence was observed.

“Well, Gilian?” said he, a touch of irony in his accent, himself looking a droll figure, hunched round his books and turning like a weathercock jerkily to keep the umbrella between him and the wind that strained its whalebone ribs till they almost snapped.

Gilian stopped, looked hard at the ground, said never a word. And old Brooks, over him, gazed at the wet figure with puzzlement and pity.

“You beat me; you beat me quite!” said he. “There’s the making of a fine man in you; you have sharpness, shrewdness, a kind of industry, or what may be doing for that same; every chance of a paternal kind—that’s to say a home complete and comfortable—and still you must be acting like a wean! You were not at the school to-day. I’m keeping it from Miss Campbell as long as I can, but I’ll be bound to tell her of your truancy this time.”

He risked the surrounding hand a moment from his books, bent a little and tapped the boy’s jacket pocket.

“Ay! A book again!” said he slyly. “What is it this time? But never mind; it does not matter. I’ll warrant it is not Mr. Butter’s Spellings nor Murray the Grammarian, but some trash of a novelle. Any exercise for your kind but the appointed task! I wish—I wish—Tuts! laddie, you are wet to the skin, haste ye home and get a heat.”

Gilian did not need a second bidding; but ran up the street, without slacking his pace till he got to the foot of the Paymaster’s stair, where the wind from the pend-close was howling most dismally. He lingered on the stair, extremely loth to face Miss Mary with a shame so plain upon his countenance as he imagined it must be. No way that he could tell the story of the Jean’s disaster would leave out his sorry share in it. A quick ear heard him on the stair; the door opened.

“Oh, you rascal!” cried Miss Mary, her anxious face peering down at him. “You were never in the school till this time.” She put her hand upon his bonnet and his sleeve and found them soaking. “Oh, I knew it! I knew it!” she cried. “Just steeping!”

He found an unexpected relief in her consternation at his condition and in her bustle to get him into dry clothing. After the experience he had come through, the storm and the spectacle he had seen as in a dream from the shore, he indulged in the cordiality and cosiness of the warm kitchen for a little with selfish gladness. But it was only for a little; the disaster to the vessel and the consciousness that his own part in the business would certainly come to light, overwhelmed him again, and it was a most dolorous face that looked at Miss Mary over the viands she had just put before him.

“What ails the callant?” she demanded in a tremble, staring at him.

He burst into tears, the first she had seen on his face since ever he had come to her house, and all her mother’s heart was sore.

“What mischief were you in?” she asked, putting an arm about his neck, and her troubled face down upon his hair as he shook in his chair. “I am sure you were not to blame. It could not have been much, Gilian. Tuts! tuts!” And so she went on in a ludicrous way, coaxing him to indifference for the sin she fancied.

At last he told her the beginnings of his tragedy, that he had seen the Jean wrecked on Ealan Dubh, and the girl Nan on board of her. She was for a moment dumb with horror, believing the end had come to all upon the vessel, but on this Gilian speedily assured her, and “Oh, am n’t I glad!” said she with a simple utterance and a transport on her visage that showed how deep was her satisfaction.

“How did they get ashore?” she asked,

“In the small boat,” said Gilian uncomfortably. “It caught on the logs at the mouth of the river when she drifted off, and—and—”

“And a boy went out in it and brought them help!” she cried, finely uplifted in a delight that she had guessed the cause of his trepidation. “Oh, you darling! And not to say a word of it! Am not I the proud woman this day? My dear companion Nan’s girl!”

She caught him fervently as he rose ashamed from his seat to explain or to make an escape from the punishment that was in her error, a punishment more severe than if he had been blamed. She was one never prone to the displays of love and rapture, but this time her joy overcame her, and she kissed him with something of a redness on her face. It was to the boy as if he had been smitten on the mouth. He drew back almost rudely in so great a confusion that it but confirmed her guess. “You must come and tell my brothers,” said she, “this very moment. Don’t say anything about the lass, but they’ll be keen to hear about the vessel They sit there hearing nothing of the world’s news, unless it comes to the fireside for them, and then I’ve noticed they’re as ready to listen as Peggy would be at the Cross well.”

She had him half way to the parlour before he thought of a protest, he had found such satisfaction in being relieved from her mistaken pride in him. Then he concluded it was as well to go through with it, thinking that if the rescue of the girl was not to be in the story, his own shortcomings need not emerge. She pushed him before her into the room; her brothers were seated at the fire, and they only turned when her voice, in a very unaccustomed excitement, broke the quietness of the chamber.

“Do you hear this?” she cried, and her hand on Gilian’s shoulder; “a vessel’s sunk on the Ealan Dubh.”

“I knew there would be tales to tell of this,” said the General. “The wind came too close on the frost. I mind at Toulouse——”

“And Gilian was down at the Waterfoot and saw it all,” she broke in upon the reminiscence.

“Was he, faith?” said the Cornal. “I like my tales at first hand. Tell us all about it, laddie; what vessel was she?”

He wheeled his chair about as he spoke, and roused himself to attention. It was a curious group, too much like his old court-martial to be altogether to the boy’s taste. For Miss Mary stood behind him, with an air of proud possession of him that was disquieting, and the two men seemed to expect from him some very exciting history indeed.

“Well, well!” said the Cornal, drumming with his fingers on his chair-arm impatiently, “you’re in no great hurry with your budget. What vessel was it?”

“It was the Jean,” said Gilian, bracing himself up for a plunge.

“Ye seem to be a wondrous lot mixed up with the fortunes of that particular ship,” said the Cornal sourly. “What way did it happen?”

“She was in the mouth of the river,” said Gilian, “and the spate of the river brought down the wooden bridge at Clonary. I saw it coming, and I cried to them, and Black Duncan cast off, leaving boat and tiller. She drove before the wind and went on Ealan Dubh, and sunk, and—that was all.”

The story, as he told it, was as bald of interest as if it were a page from an old almanack.

“What came of the men?” said the Cornal. “The loss of the Jean does not amount to muckle; there was not a plank of her first timbers left in her.”

“They got ashore in the small boat,” said Gilian.

“Which was left behind, I think you said at first,” said the Cornal, annoyed at some apparent link a missing in the chain of circumstance. “If the boat was left behind as well as the tiller—I think you mentioned the tiller—how did they get ashore in it? Did you see them get ashore?”

“I saw Black Duncan and the girl, but not the others,” answered Gilian, all at once forgetting that some caution was needed here.

Up more straightly sat the Cornal, and fixed him with a stern eye.

“Oh, ay!” said he; “she was in the story too, and you fancied you might hide her. I would not wonder now but you had been in the vessel yourself.”

Gilian was abashed at his own inadvertence, but he hastened to explain that he was on the shore watching the vessel when she struck.

“But you were on the vessel some time?” said the Cornal, detecting some reservation.

“Oh, Colin, Colin, I wonder at you!” cried Miss Mary, now in arms for her favourite, and utterly heedless of the frown her brother threw at her for her interference. “You treat the boy as if he was a vagabond and—”

“—Vagabond or no vagabond,” said the Cornal, “he was where he should not be. I’m wanting but the truth from him, and that, it seems, is not very easy to get.”

“You are not just at all,” she protested. Then she went over and whispered something in his ear. His whole look changed; where had been suspicion came something of open admiration, but he gave it no expression on his tongue.

“Take your time, Gilian,” said he; “tell us how the small boat got to the vessel.”

“The boy went down to the river mouth,” said Gilian, “and—”

“—The boy?” said the Cornal. “Well, if you must be putting it that idiotic way, you must; anyway, we’re waiting on the story.”

“—The boy went down to the river mouth and got into the small boat. She was half full of water and he baled her as well as he could with his bonnet, then pushed her off! She went up and down like a cork, and he was terrified. He thought when he went in first she would be heavy to row, but he found the lightness of her was the fearful thing. The wind slapped like a big open hand, and the water would scoop out on either side—”

“Take it easy, man, take it easy; slow march,” said the Cornal. For Gilian had run into his narrative in one of his transports and the words could not come fast enough to his lips to keep up with his imagination. His face was quivering with the emotions appropriate to the chronicle.

“—Then I put out the oar astern——”

“—Humph! You did; that’s a little more sensible way of putting it.”

“I put the oar astern,” said Gilian, never hearing the comment, but carried away by his illusion; “and the wind carried us up the way of Ealan Dubh. Sometimes the big waves would try to pull the oar from my hands, wanting fair play between their brothers and the ship. (‘Havers!’ muttered the Cornal.) And the spindrift struck me in the eyes like hands full of sand. I thought I would never get to the vessel. I thought she would be upset every moment, and I could not keep from thinking of myself hanging on to the keel and my fingers slipping in weariness.”

“A little less thinking and more speed with your boat would be welcome,” said the Cornal impatiently. “I’m sick sorry for them, waiting there on a wreck with so slow a rescue coming to them.”

Gilian hesitated, with his illusion shattered, and, all unnerved, broke for the second time into tears.

“Look at that!” cried Miss Mary pitifully, herself weeping; “you are frightening the poor laddie out of his wits,” and she soothed Gilian with numerous Gaelic endearments.

“Tuts! never mind me,” said the Cornal, rising and coming forward to clap the boy on the head for the very first time. “I think we can guess the rest of the story. Can we not guess the rest of the story, Dugald?”

The General sat bewildered, the only one out of the secret, into which Miss Mary’s whisper to the Cornal has not brought him.

“I am not good at guessing,” said he; “a man at my time likes everything straight forward.” And there was a little irritation in his tone.

“It’s only this, Dugald,” said his brother, “that here’s a pluckier young fellow than we thought, and good prospects yet for a soger in the family. I never gave Jock credit for discretion, but, faith, he seems to have gone with a keen eye to the market for once in his life! If it was not for Gilian here, Turner was wanting a daughter this day; we could hardly have hit on a finer revenge.”

“Revenge!” said the General, a flash jumping to his eyes, then dying away. “I would not have said that, Colin; I would not have said that. It is the phrase of a rough, quarrelsome young soldier, and we are elders who should be long by with it.”

“Anyhow,” said the Cornal, “here’s the makings of a hero.” And he beamed almost with affection on Gilian, now in a stupor at the complexity his day’s doings had brought him to.

The Paymaster’s rattan sounded on the stair, and “Here’s John,” said his sister. “He’ll be very pleased, I’m sure.”

It was anything but a pleased man who entered the room, his face puffed and red and his eyes searching around for his boy. He pointed a shaking finger at him.

“What, in God’s name, do you mean by this?” he asked vaguely.

“Don’t speak to the boy in that fashion,” said the Cornal in a surprising new paternal key. “If he has been in mischief he has got out of it by a touch of the valiant—”

“Valiant!” cried the Paymaster with a sneer. “He made an ass of himself at the Waterfoot, and his stupidity would have let three or four people drown if Young Islay, a callant better than himself had not put out a boat and rescued them. The town’s ringing with it.”

The scar on the Cornal’s face turned almost black. “Is that true that my brother says?” said he.

Gilian searched in a reeling head for some answer he could not find; his parched lips could not have uttered it, even if he had found it, so he nodded.

“Put me to my bed, somebody,” said the General, breaking in suddenly on the shock of the moment, and staggering to one side a little as he spoke. “Put me to my bed, somebody. I am getting too old to understand!”