Jack
treated me, but I didn't have very much. My head ached so, and I sat down
in a corner and went to sleep till it was closing time. Then old Swag
made me get out, so I came to wait for you. I didn't hit him or anything,
Dicky. I was quite quiet all the while. So you won't be cross, will
you,--not like last time?"

"I am going to punish you if that's what you mean," Dick said, as he
opened the garden-gate.

Robin shrank again, shivering like a frightened dog. "But, Dicky, I
only--I only--"

"Broke the rule and lied about it," his brother said uncompromisingly.
"You know the punishment for that."

Robin attempted no further appeal. He went silently into the house and
blundered up to his room. There was only one thing left to do, and that
was to pay the penalty--of which Dick's wrath was infinitely the hardest
part to bear.

He crouched down on the floor by the bed to wait. The light from the
passage shone in through the half-open door and the great lamp at the
lodge-gates of the Court opposite, which was kept burning all night,
glared in at the unblinded window, but there was no light in the room.
There was something almost malignant to Robin's mind about the searching
brilliance of this lamp. He hid his eyes from it, huddling his face in
the bed-clothes, listening intently the while for Dick's coming but
hearing only the dull thumping of his own heart.

There was no one in the house except the two brothers. A woman came in
every day from the village to do the work of the establishment. Now that
Jack had found quarters elsewhere there was not a great deal to be done
since Robin was accustomed also to making himself useful in various
ways. It occurred to him suddenly as he crouched there waiting that Dick
had been too hurried to eat much supper before his departure for High
Shale that evening. The thought had been in his brain before, but
subsequent events had dislodged it. Now, with every nerve alert and
pricking with suspense, it returned to him very forcibly. Dicky was
hungry perhaps--or consumed with thirst, as he himself had been. And he
would certainly go empty to bed unless he, Robin, plucked up courage to
go down and wait upon him.

It needed considerable courage, for his instinct was always to hide when
he had incurred Dick's anger. Judicial though it invariably was, it was
the most terrible thing the world held for him. It shook him to the
depths, and to go down and confront it again with the penalty