“My father!” thought Syd, and a cold chill of dread, shame, and misery ran through him as he lay across the bough, silent and motionless, but clinging to it with all his might.
“Got ye, have I, Pan-y-mar?” growled a husky voice. “Now then, let go, and come and take it in your room, or I’ll lay on here.”
The first sound of that voice sent a warm glow through Syd, and thawed his frozen faculties.
Exulting in the idea that it was only the old boatswain, he drew himself all together as he held on with his arms to the bough, and then he kicked out with all his might; the attack being so unexpected, that as Barney received both feet in his chest, he loosened his hold, grasped wildly at the air to save himself, and then came down in a sitting position with sufficient force to evoke a groan; while by the time he had recovered himself sufficiently to rise and get to the fence, he could hear the rapid beat of steps in the distance.
“Why, there must be some one with him,” growled Barney. “All right, my boy, on’y wait a bit. You’ll come crawling round the cottage ’fore you’re many hours older, and I’ll lay that there rope’s-end in the tub. It’ll make it lie closer and heavier round your back. Oh!”
He had taken a step to go back out of the shrubbery to the path, when an acute pain ran up his spine, and made him limp along to the gardener’s cottage at the bottom of the grounds, grumbling to himself, and realising that men of sixty can’t fall so lightly as those who are forty years younger.
“But never mind, I’ll make him pay for the lot. He shan’t play tricks with me. Lor’, I wish I was going to sea again, and had that boy under me; I’d make him—Oh, murder! he’s a’most broke my back.”