rd.

"Come, Lindon," said his uncle quietly, "you have kept us waiting some
time."

The lad glanced quickly round the well-furnished room, bright with
curiosities brought in many a voyage from the west, and with the poison
of Mike's words still at work, he wondered how much of what he saw
rightfully belonged to him.

The next moment his eyes lit on the soft sweet troubled face of his
mother, full of appeal and reproach, and it seemed to Don that his uncle
had been upsetting her by an account of his delinquencies.

"It's top bad, and I don't deserve it," he said to himself. "Everything
seems to go wrong now. Well, what are you looking at?" he added, to
himself, as he took his seat and stared across at his cousin, the
playmate of many years, whose quiet little womanly face seemed to repeat
her father's grave, reproachful look, but who, as it were, snatched her
eyes away as soon as she met his gaze.

"They all hate me," thought Don, who was in that unhappy stage of a
boy's life when help is so much needed to keep him from turning down one
of the dark side lanes of the great main route.

"Been for a walk, Don?" said his mother with a tender look.

"No, mother, I only stopped back in the yard a little while."

His uncle set down his cup sharply.

"You have not been keeping that scoundrel Bannock?" he cried.

"No, sir; I've been talking to Jem."

"Ho!" ejaculated the old merchant. "That's better. But you might have
come straight home."

Don's eyes encountered his Cousin Kitty's just then, as she gave her
head a shake to throw back the brown curls which clustered about her
white forehead.

She turned her gaze upon her plate, and he could see that she was
frowning.

"Yes," thought Don, "they all dislike me, and I'm only a worry and
trouble to my mother. I wish I was far away--anywhere."

He went on with his tea moodily and in silence, paying no heed to the
reproachful glances of his mother's eyes, which seemed to him to say,
and with some reason, "Don't be sulky, Don, my boy; try and behave as I
could wish."

"It's of no use to try," he said to himself; and the meal passed off
very silently, and with a cold chill on every one present.

"I'm very sorry, Laura," said her brother, as soon as Don had left the
room; "and I don't know what to do for the best. I hate finding fault
and scolding, but if the boy is in the wrong I must chide."

"Try and be patient with him, Josiah," said Mrs Lavington pleading