mpared with this feeble finite shadow of
the same that shot thrilling through the spirit of the boy. So are we
made.

Outside a heavy step sounded, and a voice hailed Christian. 'Here, boy,
lend a hand.'

He swung out into the clear world. There Giles, empty-handed, made for
the rear linhay, and faced round with a puckered brow.

'What the devil have you been up to?'

'Trying her paces,' said Christian.

'Who's to blame then--you or she?'

'Oh, not she!' said Christian hastily, jealous for the credit of his new
possession.

'Well, well, that ever such a duffer should be bred up by me,' grumbled
Giles. 'Out with it all, boy. How came it?'

Christian shut his mouth and shook his head.

'What's this? Don't play the fool. As it is, you've set the quay buzzing
more than enough.'

'Who cares?'

'And you've broken Philip's head within two minutes of touching, I
believe.'

''Twas done out of no ill-will,' protested Christian. 'A dozen swarmed
over, for all the world as if she were just carrion for them to rummage
like crabs. So I hitched one out again--the biggest by preference,--and
he slipped as you called to speed me off here. If he took it ill, 'tis no
great matter to square.'

'I would for this once he or any were big enough to break your head for
you as well as you deserve,' said Giles savagely.

'We're of a mind there,' said Christian, meekly and soberly.

Giles perversely took this as a scoff, and fumed.

'Here has the wife been in a taking along of you; never saying a word,
going about like a stiff statue, with a face to turn a body against his
victuals; and I saying where was the sense? had you never before been
gone over a four-and-twenty hours? And now to fix her, clean without a
cause, you bring back a hole to have let in Judgment-day. Now will come
moils to drive a man daft.

'And to round off, by what I hear down yonder, never a civil answer but a
broken head is all you'll give. "Look you there now," says Philip, and I
heard him, and he has a hand clapped to his crown, and he points at your
other piece of work, and he says, says Philip: "Look you there now, _he_
was never born to drown," and he laughs in his way. Well, I thought he
was not far out, take it either way, when I see how you have brought the
poor thing in mishandled. It passes me how you kept her afloat and
brought her through. Let's hear.'

Though Giles might rate, there was never a rub. Years before the old man
and the boy h