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And if those passing seasons traced deeper lines on Simon’s brow, gave more womanly solidity to Bess’s form and character, they brought no change the foundling could mark. Tom Hulme’s whereabouts was still undiscovered. Matt Cooper was still a widower. But they and his masters could note the steady progress he made, and his chivalrous love of truth and sense of honour shown in many ways in little things. Yet there was one event a grief to him. His little brown linnet pined for its young friend, and died before the first Whitsunday came.

He was not much over ten years old when he was proved to possess courage, as well as truth and honour.

For some time Nancy, the cook, had observed that the cream was skimmed surreptitiously from the milk-pans in the dairy, that the milk itself was regularly abstracted, and she was loud in complaint. She could scarcely find cream enough to set on the governor’s table, and servants and schoolboys were in turn accused of being the depredators.

Complaints were made to Mr. Terry; servants and boys were alike interrogated and watched, and punished on suspicion; but nothing could be proved, and no precautions could save the milk. The lofty and spacious kitchen had its entrance almost under the porch, and close beside it was a flight of stone steps leading to the dairy, a cellar below the kitchen, lit by a small window high up on the side towards the river, and of course opposite to the steps.