"And you were here—you allowed this? Ah-h!" He flung up his arms, the pale lips moved convulsively, but no sound came forth.
"I—you think I ought to have interfered?" began the Boy.
"I think—" the Brother began bitterly, checked himself, knelt down, and felt the old man's pulse.
Nicholas at the bear-skin was making the Boy signs to come.
The girl was sobbing with her face on the ground. Again Nicholas beckoned, and then disappeared. There seemed to be nothing to do but to follow his host. When the bear-skin had dropped behind the Boy, and he crawled after Nicholas along the dark passage, he heard the muffled voice of the girl praying: "Oh, Mary, Mother of God, don't let him tell Sister Winifred."
CHAPTER VI
A PENITENTIAL JOURNEY
"... Certain London parishes still receive £12 per annum for fagots to burn heretics."—JOHN RICHARD GREEN.
The Boy slept that night in the Kachime beside a very moody, restless host. Yagorsha dispensed with the formality of going to bed, and seemed bent on doing what he could to keep other people awake. He sat monologuing under the seal lamp till the Boy longed to throw the dish of smouldering oil at his head. But strangely enough, when, through sheer fatigue, his voice failed and his chin fell on his broad chest, a lad of fourteen or so, who had also had difficulty to keep awake, would jog Yagorsha's arm, repeating interrogatively the last phrase used, whereon the old Story-Teller would rouse himself and begin afresh, with an iteration of the previous statement. If the lad failed to keep him going, one or other of the natives would stir uneasily, lift a head from under his deerskin, and remonstrate. Yagorsha, opening his eyes with a guilty start, would go on with the yarn. When morning came, and the others waked, Yagorsha and the lad slept.