“Aleck, when I was your age my sister and I were constant companions. You have her voice, boy, and there is a ring in it so like—oh, so like hers! Yes, I heard, and I believe in you. I believe, too, that you will respect my prayers to you that all I have said this night shall be held sacred. I do not wish the world to know our secrets. But, there, there,” he said, in a totally changed voice, “what a day this has been for us both! You have suffered cruelly, my boy, for my sake, and I in my blindness and bitterness treated you ill.”
“Oh, uncle, pray, pray say no more!” cried the boy, piteously.
“I must—just this, Aleck: I have suffered too, my boy. Another black shadow had come across my darkened life, and in my ignorance I turned against you as I did. Aleck, boy, your uncle asks your forgiveness, and—now no more, my boy; it is nearly midnight, and we must try and rest. Can you go to sleep again?”
“Yes, uncle,” cried the boy, eagerly, “I feel as if it will be easy now. Good-night, uncle.”
“Good-night, my boy,” whispered the old man, huskily, and he hurried out, whispering words of thankfulness to himself; but they were words the nephew did not hear.
As the door closed Aleck sprang off the bed on to his feet, his knuckles smarting as he struck an attitude and tightly clenched his fists, seeing in imagination Big Jem the slanderer standing before him once again.
“You cowardly brute!” he muttered; and then his aspect changed in the dim light shed by the candle, for there was a look of joyous pride in his countenance, disfigured though it was, as he said, hurriedly: “I didn’t half tell uncle that I thoroughly whipped him, after all. But old Tom Bodger—he’ll be as pleased as Punch.”
It was rather a distorted smile on Aleck’s lips, as, after undressing, he fell fast asleep, but it was a very happy one all the same, and so thought Captain Lawrence as he stole into the room in the grey dawn to see if his nephew was sleeping free from fever and pain, and then stole out again without making a sound.