He started violently then at his uncle’s stern command, uttered like an order to a company of men to step into some deadly breach, and the next moment the door was closed and the old man was scowling at him from the chair into which he had thrown himself, sending it back with the legs, giving forth a sound like a harsh snort as they scraped over the bare oaken floor.
Aleck drew a long deep breath and tried to tighten up his nerves, ready for what he felt was going to be a desperate encounter with the fierce-looking old man whom from long experience he knew to be harsh, stern, and troubled with a terrible temper, which made him morose and strange at times, his fits lasting for days, during which periods he would hardly speak a word to his nephew, leaving him to himself save when he came upon him suddenly to see that he was not wasting time, but going on with one or other of the studies which the old man supervised, or working in the garden.
“I want you, though you lead this lonely life with me, Aleck,” he would say, frowning heavily the while, “to grow up fairly learned in what is necessary for a young man’s education, so that some day, when I am dead and gone out of this weary world, you may take your place as a gentleman—not an ornamental gentleman, whose sole aim is to find out how he can best amuse himself, but a quiet, straightforward, honourable gentleman, one whom, if people do not admire because his ways are not the same as theirs, they will find themselves bound to respect.”
These strange fits of what Aleck, perhaps instigated by Jane, their one servant, called “master’s temper,” would be followed by weeks of mental blue sky, when the black clouds rolled away and the sun of a genial disposition shone out, and the old man seemed as if he could not lavish enough affection upon his nephew. The result of all this was that the boy’s feelings towards the old man, who had always occupied the position of father to him as well as preceptor, were a strange mingling of fear of his harshness, veneration of his learning and power of instructing him in everything he learned, and love. For there were times when Aleck would say, gloomily, to himself, “I’m sure uncle thoroughly hates me and wishes me away,” while there were times when he was as happy as the days were long, and ready to feel certain that the old man loved him as much as if he were his own child.
“He must,” thought the boy, “or he wouldn’t have nursed and coddled me up so when I had that fever and the doctor told Jane that he had done all he could, and that I should die—go out with the tide next day. That’s what I like in uncle,” he mused, “when he isn’t out of temper—he’s so clever. Knew ever so much better than the doctor. What did he say then? ‘Doctors are all very well, Aleck, but there are times when the nurse is the better man—that is, when it’s a cock nurse and not a hen. You had a cock nurse, boy, and I pulled you through.’”
But the love was in abeyance on this particular morning at the Den, as the old man had named his out-of-the-way solitary dwelling, and Aleck felt that the place was rightly named as he stood ready to face the savage-looking denizen of the place, who, after staring him down with a pair of fiercely glowing eyes, suddenly opened upon him with:
“Now, then, sir! So you’ve been fighting?”
“Yes, uncle,” said the boy, meekly.
“Who with?”
“Some of the Rockabie boys, uncle.”