He walked away steadily with his head up. He did not once look back at
her. But as he climbed the hill he seemed to himself to grow smaller
and smaller, more and more tired and lonely. He had lost her. He
would never play with her again. The Brothers Banditti had gone each
to his home. They sat by the fireside with their people, and were nice
children. To-morrow they would play just as though nothing had
happened. And Francey would be there, dancing in and out----

He stumbled a little. The hiccoughs were definitely sobs, hard-drawn,
shaking him from head to foot. It was his birthday. And at the bottom
of the hill, hidden in evening mist, the big dark house waited for him.



4

There was light showing in the dining-room window, so that he knew his
father had come home. At that all his sorrow and sense of a grievous
wrong done to him was swallowed up in abject physical terror. Even
later in life, when things had shrunk into reasonable proportions, it
was difficult for him to see his father as others had seen him, as an
unhappy not unlovable man, gifted with an erratic genius which had been
perverted into an amazing facility for living on other people's money,
and cursed with the temper of a maniac. To Robert Stonehouse his
father was from first to last the personification of nightmare.

He stood now in the deep shadow of the porch, trying to make up his
mind to ring the bell. His legs and arms had become ice-cold and
refused to move. There did not seem to be anything alive in him except