'Where will you sleep, sir?' asked George.
Faro indicated a wooden chair.
'You may have my bench, sir. I will sleep there.'
Faro smiled. 'Thank you for the offer, but as it is five feet long and I am over six feet tall, I think it is better adapted for your needs than mine.' He nodded towards the chair. 'I will do excellently in that.' He refrained from adding that in any case he would be unable to sleep until he saw Dieter safely back.
And so he began his vigil. The two boys were silent, probably exhausted, and he hoped asleep, for outside the barking they had mistaken for dogs became unmistakably wolves howling.
It grew noisier, hungrier and bolder. And nearer.
After a while, George sat up. 'I cannot sleep, Mr Faro. I am too excited. Seeing Mama tomorrow, I expect. I can hardly believe it. I am so glad to be going home again. I never realised it until now. I do wish you could meet my mother, sir. You would like her very much.'
Faro did not doubt that as he nodded politely.
'And she will like you and want to thank you for bringing me safely home.' Pausing, he looked at the book open on Faro's knee. 'But I am disturbing you, sir. I have finished ‘Treasure Island’, I enjoyed it but real life is much more exciting, isn't it?'
Faro could only agree to that too. There were few moments in most boys' lives, and he hoped there would be none in this particular lad's existence more exciting and dangerous than the present one of being stranded in an old railway-hut with a starving wolf pack howling outside the door.
'I should like to read more books by Mr Stevenson,' said George. 'Has he written anything else I might like and find interesting?'
Faro did not think there were many books more exciting and interesting than ‘Kidnapped’ which had a curious parallel in George's life and his own at this very moment.
'It is the story of a man and a boy on a terrific adventure and the friendship that grew between them in danger. Mr Stevenson, someone wrote, had a genius for friendship. And he knew what he was talking about, he has a young stepson.'
'I should like to read that book, sir.'
'Then I shall send you a copy as soon as I get back to Scotland.'
'Oh, thank you, sir. I shall look forward to that.'
'Some of their adventures are in the Highlands. You'll enjoy that part, I'm sure.'
George sighed sadly. 'And I will keep it to remind me of my time at Glenatholl.' He looked at Faro. 'I do wish I had the chance to see your islands, Mr Faro, your Orkney.'
'So you shall when you come to Britain again.'
But he knew, and he thought that George also knew, how remote the possibility was of his return to school or even to Scotland in the foreseeable future.
George looked at him. 'I would be greatly obliged, sir, if you would tell me a little more about the Vikings.'
And so, by the embers of a dying stove that cracked and sparked as Faro fed it more logs, with George at his side, he retold stories from the ‘Orkneyinga Saga’ of the Norse chieftains, of Vikings and trolls and mermaids.
And of how his own grandmother was reputed to be a seal woman. 'She had webbed toes and fingers and people said she had magic powers of foretelling the future. She came from the kingdom of the sea, so folks believed.'
George listened enthralled as Faro told him the legend of the seal woman, not his grandmother this time, one who was taken in a fisherman's net and, falling in love with her captor, shed her skin and became mortal. They married and had children. Then one day she found, hidden in an old chest, her seal skin. When she took it in her hands, the sea called her home again.
He looked down at George, his head resting against his shoulder. He was breathing deeply, fast asleep and Faro pushed back his hair and kissed his forehead gently. As he did so he whispered in his heart the words he must never utter aloud, 'Goodnight, my son - my dear son.'
As he was settling him on the bench, George opened his eyes momentarily, sighed and with a shiver closed his eyes again. Faro, fearing that he was chilled, threw his Ulster coat over him and returned to his wooden chair and ‘Edwin Drood’.
With so many mysteries of his own since he had begun the book, he found his concentration wandering.
Where was Dieter? Why was he taking so long?
Determined to keep vigil, to stay awake until he returned, he read a few more pages.
Sleep seemed impossible as the old porter's snores deadened even the wolves' hungry howling outside the door.
Chapter 17
Sometime around daybreak, Faro awoke from a bad dream. For a moment he had not the least idea where he was, then every aching bone in his body reminded him that he had spent the night sitting upright on a hard wooden chair.
The faint light from the window revealed that the two boys still slept and the porter snored as gustily as ever.
But Dieter had not returned.
The fire was dead ashes, the room bitterly cold, and ice had formed on the window pane clouded by the sleepers' breaths.
Faro opened the door and walked along the snowy platform. Animal pawmarks everywhere indicated that the wolves had been very active, hungrily pacing back and forth outside the door.
He shuddered. Why had Dieter failed to return? What had become of him? Faro stared down the track in the direction the man had taken, certain now that he could not have survived. He had fallen victim to the wolves or some other dire misfortune.
Faro shook his head sadly, full of sudden remorse, never having thought it
