“That is a falsehood,” breathed Leighton, tensely, “I am going to thrash you until you remember.”

Leighton saw his boy’s frail body shrink, he saw a flush leap to his cheeks and fade, leaving them dead-white again.  Then he looked into his son’s eyes, and the hand with which he was groping for the cane stopped, poised in air.  In those eyes there was something that no man could thrash.  Scorn, anguish, pride, the knowledge of ages, gazed out from a child’s eyes upon Leighton, and struck terror to his soul.  His boy’s frail body was the abiding-place of a power that laughed at the strength of man’s hands.

“My boy, O, my boy!” groaned Leighton.

“Father!” cried Shenton, with the cry of a bursting heart, and hurled himself into his father’s arms.

CHAPTER V

The next day was the first of the long vacation, and with it came an addition to the Leighton household.  Mammy was given a temporary helper, a shrewd little maid, with a head thirty years old on shoulders of twelve.  Lalia was her name.  The Reverend Orme had chosen her from among his charity pupils.  He himself gave her his instructions—­never to leave Shenton except to run and report the moment he escaped from her charge.

Lalia was accepted without suspicion by the children not as a nurse, but as a playmate.  Weeks passed.  The four played together with a greater harmony than the three had ever attained.  Day after day the Reverend Orme sat waiting in his study and brooding.  The dreaded call never came.  He began to distrust his messenger.

Then one stifling afternoon as he sat dozing in his chair a sharp rap on the study door awakened him with a start.

“Master!  Master!” called Lalia’s voice.

“Yes, yes,” cried Leighton; “come in.”

As he rose from his chair Lalia entered.  She was breathless with running.

“Master,” she said, “Shenton did quarrel with us.  He has gone to Manoel—­to his house.”

“Manoel!” cried Leighton, “Manoel!” and strode hatless out into the glaring sun, across the lawn, and down the loquat avenue.

Lewis, standing with Natalie in the orange-orchard, stared, wondering, at that hurrying figure.  Never had he seen the Reverend Orme walk like that, hatless, head hanging and swinging from side to side, fists clenched.  Where could he he going?  Suddenly he knew.  The Reverend Orme was going to Manoel’s house.  Shenton was there.  Lalia came running to them.  “Hold Natalie!” Lewis cried to her, and sped away to warn Shenton of danger.  He ran with all the speed of his eight years, but from the first he felt he was too late.  The low-hanging branches of the orange-trees hindered him.

When he burst through the last of them, he saw the Reverend Orme’s tall figure, motionless now, standing at the soiled, small-paned window of Manoel’s house.  As he stared, the tall figure crouched and stole out of sight, around the corner toward the door.  Lewis rushed to the window and looked in.  It seemed to him only a day since he had had to drag a log to stand on to see through this same window.