Ye'll be a comfort till yer mither some day yet." With these words, Thomas turned and left them.
There had been a growing, though it was still a vague sense, in Alec's mind, that he was not doing well; and this rebuke of Thomas Crann brought it full into the light of his own consciousness.

From that day he worked better.

Mr Malison saw the change, and acknowledged it.

This reacted on Alec's feeling for the master; and during the following winter he made three times the progress he had made in any winter preceding.
For the sea of summer ebbed away, and the rocky channels of the winter appeared, with its cold winds, its ghost-like mists, and the damps and shiverings that cling about the sepulchre in which Nature lies sleeping.

The boat was carefully laid up, across the rafters of the barn, well wrapped in a shroud of tarpaulin.