ther once,
"what do you breenge into the bushes to watch those nasty things for?"

"They're queer," he said musingly.

Even if he _was_ a little dull wi' the book, she was sure he would come
to something, for, eh, he was such a noticing boy.

But there was nothing to touch him in "The Wooing of Angeline;" he was
moving in an alien world. It was a complicated plot, and, some of the
numbers being lost, he was not sharp enough to catch the idea of the
story. He read slowly and without interest. The sounds of the outer
world reached him in his loneliness and annoyed him, because, while
wondering what they were, he dared not look out to see. He heard the
rattle of wheels entering the big yard; that would be Peter Riney back
from Skeighan with the range. Once he heard the birr of his father's
voice in the lobby and his mother speaking in shrill protest, and
then--oh, horror!--his father came up the stair. Would he come into the
garret? John, lying on his left side, felt his quickened heart thud
against the boards, and he could not take his big frighted eyes from the
bottom of the door. But the heavy step passed and went into another
room. John's open mouth was dry, and his shirt was sticking to his back.

The heavy steps came back to the landing.

"Whaur's _my_ gimlet?" yelled his father down the stair.

"Oh, I lost the corkscrew, and took it to open a bottle," cried his
mother wearily. "Here it is, man, in the kitchen drawer."

"_Hah!_" his father barked, and he knew he was infernal angry. If he
should come in!

But he went tramping down the stair, and John, after waiting till his
pulses were stilled, resumed his reading. He heard the masons in the
kitchen, busy with the range, and he would have liked fine to watch
them, but he dared not go down till after four. It was lonely up here by
himself. A hot wind had sprung up, and it crooned through the keyhole
drearily; "_oo-woo-oo_," it cried, and the sound drenched him in a vague
depression. The splotch of yellow light had shifted round to the
fireplace; Janet had kindled a fire there last winter, and the ashes had
never been removed, and now the light lay, yellow and vivid, on a red
clinker of coal and a charred piece of stick. A piece of glossy white
paper had been flung in the untidy grate, and in the hollow curve of it
a thin silt of black dust had gathered--the light showed it plainly. All
these things the boy marked and was subtly aware of their
unpleasantness. H