slack. The awful and mysterious smile of death fixed itself upon her
pale mouth.

So passed Maria Champneys from her tiny house in Riverton, in the
dawn of a winter morning, when the tide was turning and the world
was full of the sound of water running seaward.




CHAPTER III

AT GRIPS WITH LIFE


The best or the worst thing that can happen to a boy in this country
is to be poor in it for a while, to be picked up neck and crop and
flung upon his own resources; not always to remain poor, of course,
for one may be damned quite as effectually and everlastingly upon
the cross as off it; but to be poor long enough to acquire a sense
of proportion by coming to close grips with life; to learn what
things and people really are, the good and the bad of them together;
to have to weigh and measure cant and sentimentality and Christian
charity--which last is a fearsome thing--in the balance with truth
and common sense and human kindness. It is an experience that makes
or breaks.

Peter had always adored his mother; but it wasn't until now that he
realized how really wonderful she had been. How she had kept the
roof over his head, and his stomach somehow satisfied, and had sent