“You brute!” cried Deb, shielding the offending little arm from a second blow.  “A great big man like you, to strike a tender mite like this!”

“‘Tender’ is hardly the word,” the irate parent sneered.  “And mite as he is, he is not to do things of that sort.”  Guthrie glared at her sacred locks, dishevelled.  “I’m awfully sorry.  He shan’t do it again.  I’ll take him away tomorrow.”

“You will do nothing of the sort,” flashed Deb.  “You are not fit to have the care of him.  He shall stay here, where he will be treated as a baby ought to be—­not smacked and knocked about for nothing at all.”

“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 brought dimness to the man’s hard blue eyes, and turned his steps houseward.

He arrived to find a large four-horsed brake at the door.  The body was filling with other persons—­the sailor knew not, cared not whom.  He looked up at the radiant figure in front.  She looked down on him with heart-melting kindness, as if nothing had happened.

“Why, Mr Carey, aren’t you coming to church?” she called to him.  “Not—­not today, I think,” he answered, without premeditation.

“Christmas Day,” she hinted invitingly.  “You don’t always get the chance, you know.”

“I know.  But—­thanks—­I’d rather not,” he bluntly persisted, hating himself for the churlish response, and all the time wanting to go—­ certain to have gone if he had given himself time to think.  Soldiers and sailors, with their habit of unquestioning obedience to authority, are almost always “good” churchmen, and, as she had pointed out, this offer of Christian privileges did not come to him every year.  He had not anticipated it on this occasion, knowing Redford to be situated at least ten miles from a church.