tiring into a far corner, sat sipping at his own cup.

"Bob," said the boy suddenly, "do you LIKE being a dog; put to what
company your master wishes?"

Tryst set his cup down, stood up, and crossed his thick arms--the swift
movement from that stolid creature had in it something sinister; but he
did not speak.

"Do you like it, Bob?"

"I'll not say what I feels, Mr. Derek; that's for me. What I does'll be
for others, p'raps."

And he lifted his strange, lowering eyes to Derek's. For a full minute
the two stared, then Derek said:

"Look out, then; be ready!" and, getting off the sill, he went out.

On the bright, slimy surface of the pond three ducks were quietly
revelling in that hour before man and his damned soul, the dog, rose to
put the fear of God into them. In the sunlight, against the green
duckweed, their whiteness was truly marvellous; difficult to believe that
they were not white all through. Passing the three cottages, in the last
of which the Gaunts lived, he came next to his own home, but did not turn
in, and made on toward the church. It was a very little one, very old,
and had for him a curious fascination, never confessed to man or beast.
To his mother, and Sheila, more intolerant, as became women, that little,
lichened, gray stone building was the very emblem of hypocrisy, of a
creed preached, not practised; to his father it was nothing, for it was
not alive, and any tramp, dog, bird, or fruit-tree meant far more. But in
Derek it roused a peculiar feeling, such as a man might have gazing at
the shores of a native country, out of which he had been thrown for no
fault of his own--a yearning deeply muffled up in pride and resentment.
Not infrequently he would come and sit brooding on the grassy hillock
just above the churchyard. Church-going, with its pageantry, its
tradition, dogma, and demand for blind devotion, would have suited him
very well, if only blind devotion to his mother had not stood across that
threshold; he could not bring himself to bow to that which viewed his
rebellious mother as lost. And yet the deep fibres of heredity from her
papistic Highland ancestors, and from old pious Moretons, drew him
constantly to this spot at times when no one would be about. It was his
enemy, this little church, the fold of all the instincts and all the
qualities against which he had been brought up to rebel; the very home of
patronage and property and superiority; the school where his friends