"I admire his pluck," quoth Dalzell, sauntering up.

"So do I," said Deb; but she handed her sobbing burden to Mary. "Here,
take him, Moll, while I put my hair up. POOR little fellow!"

She need not have been so severe. She might have known that it was
because the cheeks and hair were hers that the baby had been punished
for his assault on them. She could have seen that she was wringing the
culprit's heart. Perhaps she did, and had no room in her own to
care. She stood on the sunny garden path and lifted her hands to her
head--a lovely pose.

"Here, let me," said Claud Dalzell.

She let him--which was cruellest of all. Guthrie turned his murderous
eyes from the group and sauntered away, out of the garden, out of their
sight, unrecalled, apparently unnoticed. Mary carried the crying child
into the house.

Then for an hour the silly fellow walked alone in the most solitary
places that he could find, revelling in the thought that it was
Christmas Day, and he singled out by Fate to have no share in its happy
circumstances: no home, no friends, no love, like other men--nothing
to make life worth living, save only the baby son that he had ill-used.
Apart from the sting of Deb's comment on it, he repented him of that
blow. A great big man like him, to strike a tender mite like this--a
motherless babe, his precious Lily's bequest to him--aye, indeed! It
was the act of a brute, whatever the provocation. The mite was a waif
too, alone in the world when his father was at sea, pathetically
helpless, with no defence against blows and unkindness. The reflection