CHAPTER I.


THE BOY IN THE GATE-HOUSE.

Until his ninth year the boy about whom this story is written lived
in a house which looked upon the square of a county town. The house
had once formed part of a large religious building, and the boy's
bedroom had a high groined roof, and on the capstone an angel carved,
with outspread wings. Every night the boy wound up his prayers with
this verse which his grandmother had taught him:

"Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Bless the bed that I lie on.
Four corners to my bed,
Four angels round my head;
One to watch, one to pray,
Two to bear my soul away."

Then he would look up to the angel and say: "Only Luke is with me."
His head was full of queer texts and beliefs. He supposed the three
other angels to be always waiting in the next room, ready to bear
away the soul of his grandmother (who was bed-ridden), and that he
had Luke for an angel because he was called Theophilus, after the
friend for whom St. Luke had written his Gospel and the Acts of the
Holy Apostles. His name in full was Theophilus John Raymond, but
people called him Taffy.

Of his parents' circumstances he knew very little, except that they