screaming, with Miss Kitty's pocket-handkerchief over his head to keep
him quiet, my poor pen can but imperfectly describe.

The desire to atone for the past which had led John Broom to act the
part of one of those Good-Fellows who have, we must fear, finally
deserted us, will be easily understood. And to a nature of his type, the
earning of some self-respect, and of a character before others, was
perhaps a necessary prelude to future well-doing.

He did do well. He became a good scholar, as farmers were then. He
spent as much of his passionate energies on the farm as the farm would
absorb, and he restrained the rest. It is not cockatoos only who have
sometimes to live and be happy in this unfinished life with one wing
clipped.

In fine weather, when the perch was put into the garden, Miss Betty was
sometimes startled by stumbling on John Broom in the dusk, sitting on
his heels, the unfastened chain in his hand, with his black head
lovingly laid against Cock's white and yellow poll, talking in a low
voice, and apparently with the sympathy of his companion; and as Miss
Betty justly feared, of that "other side of the world," which they both
knew, and which both at times had cravings to revisit.

Even after the sobering influences of middle age had touched him, and a
wife and children bound him with the quiet ties of home, he had (at long
intervals) his "restless times," when his good "misses" would bring out
a little store laid by in one of the children's socks, and would bid
him. "Be off, and get a breath of the sea-air," but on condition that
the sock went with him as his purse. John Broom always looked ashamed to
go, but he came back the better, and his wife was quite easy in his