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“Be gettin’ doon the stair, my man, and look slippy,” cried his aunt, as a parting shot, “and see carefully to the kye. It’ll be as weel for ye.”

Kit had on his trousers by this time. His waistcoat followed. But before he put on his coat he knelt down to say his prayer. He had promised his mother to say it then. If he put on his coat he was apt to forget, in his haste to get out-of-doors where the beasts were friendly. So between his waistcoat and his coat he prayed. The angels were up at the time, and they heard, and went and told the Father who hears prayer. They said that in a garret at a hill-farm a boy was praying with his knees in a snow-drift–a boy without father or mother.

“Ye lazy guid-for-naething! Gin ye are no’ doon the stairs in three meenits, no’ a drap o’ porridge or a sup o’ milk shall ye get the day!”

So Kit got on his feet, and made a queer little shuffling noise with them, to induce his aunt to think that he was bestirring himself. So that is the way he had to finish his prayers–on his feet, shuffling and dancing a break-down. The angels saw, and smiled. But they took it to the Father, just the same as if Kit Kennedy had been in church. All save one, who dropped something that might have been a pearl and might have been a tear. Then he also went within the inner court, and told that which he had seen.

But to Kit there was nothing to grumble about. He was pleased, if any one was. His clogs did not let in the snow. His coat was rough, but warm. If any one was well off, and knew it, it was Kit Kennedy.

So he came down-stairs, if stairs they could be called that were but the rounds of a ladder. His aunt heard him.

“Keep awa’ frae the kitchen, ye thievin’ loon! There’s nocht there for ye–takin’ the bairns’ meat afore they’re up!”

But Kit was not hungry, which, in the circumstances, was as well. Mistress MacWalter had caught him red-handed on one occasion. He was taking a bit of hard oatcake out of the basket of “farles” which swung from the black, smoked beam in the corner. Kit had cause to remember the occasion. Ever since, she had cast it up to him. She was a master at casting up, as her husband knew. But Kit was used to it, and he did not care. A thick stick was all that he cared for, and that only for three minutes; but he minded when Mistress MacWalter abused his mother, who was dead.

Kit Kennedy made for the front door, direct from the foot of the ladder. His aunt raised herself on one elbow in bed, to assure herself that he did not go into the kitchen. She heard the click of the bolt shot back, and the stir of the dogs as Tweed and Tyke rose from the fireside to follow him. There was still a little red gleaming between the bars, and Kit would have liked to go in and warm his toes on the hearthstone. But he knew that his aunt was listening. He was going thirteen, and big for his age, so he wasted no pity on himself, but opened the door and went out. Self-pity is bad at any time. It is fatal at thirteen.

At the door one of the dogs stopped, sniffed the keen frosty air, turned quietly, and went back to the hearthstone. That was Tweed. But Tyke was out rolling in the snow when Kit Kennedy shut the door.

Then his aunt went to sleep. She knew that Kit Kennedy did his work, and that there would be no cause to complain. But she meant to complain all the same. He was a lazy, deceitful hound, an encumbrance, and an interloper among her bairns.