put up with four-footed game, when he
had rather have had a bird. There was no bread either, or vegetables;
but he minded that less, because neither of these were at hand, and he
had often lived for a long time together on animal food. During the
whole time of his listless preparations for cooking his supper, he
glanced up occasionally at the roof; but he never once saw the party
look his way. He thought it very odd that they should care so much less
about him, than he knew they did when Stephen and he came into the carr.
They neither seemed to want him nor to fear him to-day.

At length he went to set Spy loose, in order to feed him, and to have a
companion, for he felt rather dull, while seeing how busily the party on
the house-top were talking. When he returned with Spy, the sun had set,
and there was no one on the house-top. A faint light from the chamber
window told that Ailwin and the children were there. Roger wondered how
they had managed to kindle a fire, while he had the tinder-box. He
learned the truth, soon after, by upsetting the tinder-box, as he moved
the blanket. The steel fell out; and the flint and tinder were found to
be absent. In his present mood he considered it prodigious impertinence
to impose upon him the labour of finding a flint the next day, and the
choice whether to make tinder of a bit of his shirt, or to use shavings
of wood instead. He determined to show, meanwhile, that he had plenty
of fire for to-night, and therefore heaped it up so high, that there was
some danger that the lower branches of the ash under which he sat would
shrivel up with the heat.

No blaze that he could make, however, could conceal from his own view
the cheerful light from the chamber window. There was certainly a good
fire within; and those who sat beside it were probably better companions
to each other than Spy was to him. The dog was dull and would not play;
and Roger himself soon felt too tired, or something, to wish to play.
He could not conceal from himself that he should much like to be in that
chamber from which the light shone, even though there was no
cherry-brandy there now.

The stars were but just beginning to drop into the sky, and the waste of
waters still looked yellow and bright to the west; but Roger's first day
of having his own way had been quite long enough; and he spread his rug,
and rolled himself in his blanket for the night. Spy, being invited,
drew near, and lay down too. Ro