little thing in pinafores, with a great family of wax dolls. He did not
know that she was dead. Aunt Janet made no explanations; his small black
eyes took in all the decay and famine of the place; his neat black
Sabbatical coat looked queerly out of place in the book-room with its
scarred oak refectory table, its hard oak chairs and its dusty banner
hung from the ceiling above where Andrew Lashcairn sat. When his host
came into the room he pulled himself to his full five feet five and his
thin white face went even whiter. Andrew, in his frenzy, cursed him and
God and the world, and, in the old Berserk rage, dashed over the heavy
table on which Aunt Janet had set a poor meal for the stranger.

It was a wild, bizarre picture; the fire, fanned by the fierce winds
that swept down the open chimney, kept sending out puffs of smoke that
went like grey wraiths about the room; the top of the table rutted by
hundreds of years' fierce feeding; the shattered crockery and
forlorn-looking mess of food on the floor. Aunt Janet and Marcella
shrunk away--her father never got one of his rages but the girl felt
old agony in her broken arm--but the little white-faced cousin stood in
front of Andrew's gaunt frame, which seemed twice his size.

"What's the matter, Cousin Andrew?" he asked mildly. Then, turning to
the others, he said gently: "Go away for a little while. I'll have a
talk with Andrew about little Rose."

They went away with Andrew's curses following them along the windy
passage. Marcella waited in sympathy with the little man's arms, but
after a while a murmur of normal conversation came from the room and
went on until two o'clock in the morning. At last the little old cousin
came to where Marcella and Aunt Janet shivered in the kitchen, and said
simply: