“Red cloak!” exclaimed the squire; “why, Dick told me it was a boy’s hat that blew off and flapped against Forester’s eyes.”
“Ah! well, father, it may have been a hat. I thought he said a cloak; but it comes pretty much to the same thing.”
There was an unsteadiness about the boy’s voice as he said these last words which every one noticed except his father. The subject, however, was now dropped, and was not again alluded to during the evening.
Next morning after breakfast Walter knocked at his aunt’s door. When he had entered and taken the offered chair by her side, he sat for a minute or so with eyes cast down, and silent.
“Well, Walter,” she said after a while.
“Ill, auntie,” he replied, in a voice between a laugh and a sigh.
“What is it, dear Walter?”
“Only those two hands of yours, dear auntie.”
“Was there not a cause, Walter?”
No reply.