voice roused me. She stood as if she could not go near him. He had
always puzzled her so, he and his ways, and this seemed only another
enigma. Then the truth dawned on her, she shrieked as if afraid of
him, ran a dozen steps back towards the trellis door and stopped and
clasped her ineffectual gloved hands, leaving me staring blankly,
too astonished for feeling, at the carelessly flung limbs.

The same idea came to me also. I ran to her. "Mother!" I cried,
pale to the depths of my spirit, "IS HE DEAD?"

I had been thinking two minutes before of the cold fruit pie that
glorified our Sunday dinner-table, and how I might perhaps get into
the tree at the end of the garden to read in the afternoon. Now an
immense fact had come down like a curtain and blotted out all my
childish world. My father was lying dead before my eyes. . . . I
perceived that my mother was helpless and that things must be done.

"Mother!" I said, "we must get Doctor Beaseley,--and carry him
indoors."



CHAPTER THE THIRD

SCHOLASTIC


1

My formal education began in a small preparatory school in