"Yes," said Tom; "but his uncle was told about it, and our fathers know."
"Then your fathers are as——" He stopped short, for Harry Mitchell's eyes were flashing on him in a very spirited manner, and Harry's voice, raised and determined, interrupted him.
"Excuse me, sir, but I think we must not listen if you go on that tack. Blow us sky high about our own doings. We own up that we might have made our raid in a more open way, and given you warning that we meant to attack your castle. That would have been more like honest Vikings; but, all the same, we aren't going to admit that we've done anything really wicked, or that our fathers would have permitted us to carry on so if it had been wrong. And we are ready to take any punishment you think right to inflict."
"It was only our madram," [1] added Tom, using an old Shetland word, which Gaun Neeven had heard applied to himself in days gone by more often than any other term.
"Only boys' madram," his gentle mother had so often said to excuse his foolishness and screen him from the results of many an escapade. His boyhood was being swiftly recalled by the antics of those boys, and by Tom Holtum's ways and words. He saw his boyish self more in Tom than in the others, and the contact with those young spirits was doing the recluse good.
The hand on Tom's shoulder pressed more heavily, but it was not an ungentle touch, and Tom wondered what was coming next.
"Madram!" muttered Neeven, as if he were thinking aloud, and had forgotten their presence. "Madram, boys' madram! There may be worse things in the world than that."
The cloud lifted a little from their spirits then; and a welcome diversion took place at that moment in the form of Yaspard, who presented himself on the scene, flustered, and eager to take the blame of whatever had happened on his own shoulders.
After a dreamless slumber of an hour or two, he had waked up to remember his tryst, and getting up at once, had hastened to a spot where he could see if the Laulie were anywhere near the geo. Pirate accompanied him, and did not at all care for going in the direction of the geo, but kept scampering towards another point, frequently looking back, as if he wished his young master to follow.
The Laulie was not in sight, and Yaspard feared the boys had returned home on finding he did not keep his promise, or had heard of the Osprey's misfortunes, and had not come at all.