“Well, then, the devil take you, and you may do what you like!” he cried, in one of his sudden flushes of anger.  Without a word of farewell to either of us, he turned off upon the track that led up towards his father’s house.  Bonaventure de Lapp smiled at me as we walked on together.

“I didn’t thought he liked me very much,” said he.  “I can see very well that he has made a quarrel with you because you are taking me to your home.  What does he think of me then?  Does he think perhaps that I have stole the gold in my bag, or what is it that he fears?”

“Tut, I neither know nor care,” said I.  “No stranger shall pass our door without a crust and a bed.”

With my head cocked and feeling as if I was doing something very fine, instead of being the most egregious fool south of Edinburgh, I marched on down the path with my new acquaintance at my elbow.

CHAPTER VI.

A WANDERING EAGLE.

My father seemed to be much of Jim Horscroft’s opinion; for he was not over warm to this new guest and looked him up and down with a very questioning eye.  He set a dish of vinegared herrings before him, however, and I noticed that he looked more askance than ever when my companion ate nine of them, for two were always our portion.  When at last he had finished Bonaventure de Lapp’s lids were drooping over his eyes, for I doubt that he had been sleepless as well as foodless for these three days.  It was but a poor room to which I had led him, but he threw himself down upon the couch, wrapped his big blue cloak around him, and was asleep in an instant.  He was a very high and strong snorer, and, as my room was next to his, I had reason to remember that we had a stranger within our gates.

When I came down in the morning, I found that he had been beforehand with me; for he was seated opposite my father at the window-table in the kitchen, their heads almost touching, and a little roll of gold pieces between them.  As I came in my father looked up at me, and I saw a light of greed in his eyes such as I had never seen before.  He caught up the money with an eager clutch and swept it into his pocket.

“Very good, mister,” said he; “the room’s yours, and you pay always on the third of the month.”

“Ah! and here is my first friend,” cried de Lapp, holding out his hand to me with a smile which was kindly enough, and yet had that touch of patronage which a man uses when he smiles to his dog.  “I am myself again now, thanks to my excellent supper and good night’s rest.  Ah! it is hunger that takes the courage from a man.  That most, and cold next.”

“Aye, that’s right,” said my father; “I’ve been out on the moors in a snow-drift for six-and-thirty hours, and ken what it’s like.”

“I once saw three thousand men starve to death,” remarked de Lapp, putting out his hands to the fire.  “Day by day they got thinner and more like apes, and they did come down to the edge of the pontoons where we did keep them, and they howled with rage and pain.  The first few days their howls went over the whole city, but after a week our sentries on the bank could not hear them, so weak they had fallen.”