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He opened the door wide and urged them in; but they timidly held back, peering through with animal shyness at the stranger, grim and motionless, his grey eyes on them.

Combe coaxed anxiously, but they would not move except to shrink more closely against his legs, until Brundage, from across the room, spoke. They crossed to him with a breathless little scurry, and Oreena, the younger got around behind him, but Nada stood between his knees. She felt companionable with Brundage. Very few persons ever did.

The ill-trimmed lamp fretted smokily, so that shadows bounced and leaped about the room like bodiless devils trying to dodge through the light. The children gazed with a kind of wide-eyed shyness at the strange, roughly-bearded man, whose eyes alarmed them; and Brundage leaned back with a half-smile at Combe, who, now near the centre of the room, felt the need of making something of a speech, of saying what would impress his children so that they would always remember this moment, and something, too, that would be valued by the sternly silent man of whom Combe himself was always a little in awe.