"You see, Christine--but of course you won't see. You're blind where
he's concerned. What a wicked temper. Deceitful, too. I'm sure I'm
glad he's not my child. He's going to be like his father."

"I want to be like my father. I wouldn't be like you for anything."

"Robert, be quiet at once or I shall punish you."

She was angry now. She had been greatly tried during the last
twenty-four hours, and to her he was just an alien, hateful little boy
who made her feel like an interloper in her own house, bought with her
own money. She seized him by the arm, shaking him viciously, and he
flew at her, biting and kicking with all his strength.

It was an ugly, wretched scene. It ended abruptly on the landing,
where she let go her hold with a cry of pain and Robert Stonehouse
rolled down the stairs, bumping his head and catching his arm cruelly
in the banisters. He was on his feet instantly. He heard Christine
coming and he ran on, down into the hall, where he caught up his little
boots, which she had been cleaning for him, and after a desperate
struggle with the latch, out into the road--sobbing and blood-stained,
heart-broken with shame and loneliness and despair.



2

His relationship with the Brothers Banditti across the hill was
peculiar. It was one of Dr. Stonehouse's many theories of life that
children should be independent, untrammelled alike by parental