I am a little reluctant to admit at this time that my earliest
impression of the subject of these memoirs was disappointing. Perhaps
the dead man's encomiums had raised my hopes. Perhaps the barriers
which hedged in this most exclusive of youngsters had increased his
importance in my thoughts. What I saw was a boy of ten, well grown for
his years, who ambled forward rather sheepishly and gave me a moist
and rather flabby hand to shake.

He was painfully embarrassed. If I had been an ogre and Jerry the
youth allotted for his repast, he could not have shown more distress.
He was distinctly nursery-bred and, of course, unused to visitors, but
he managed a smile, and I saw that he was making the best of a bad
job. After the preliminaries of introduction, amid which Mr. Radford,
the steward of the estate, appeared, I managed to get the boy aside.

"I feel a good deal like the Minotaur, Jerry. Did you ever hear of the
Minotaur?"

He hadn't, and so I told him the story. "But I'm not going to eat
_you_," I laughed.

I had broken the ice, for a smile, a genuine joyous smile, broke
slowly and then flowed in generous ripples across his face.

"You're different, aren't you?" he said presently, his brown eyes now
gravely appraising me.

"How different, Jerry?" I asked.

He hesitated a moment and then: