performance of this feat. He constantly repeated the effort, but did
it once too often. One July morning, he miscalculated the distance
and fell, to be picked up some while after, insensible. He had
injured his spine. After many weeks of suspense suffered by his
parents, these learned that their dearly loved boy would live,
although he would be a cripple for life. Little by little, Harold
recovered strength, till he was able to get about Melkbridge on a
self-propelled tricycle; any day since the year of the accident his
kindly, distinguished face might be seen in the streets of the town,
or the lanes of the adjacent country, where he would pull up to chat
with his many friends.

His affliction had been a terrible blow to Harold; when he had first
realised the permanent nature of his injuries, he had cursed his
fate; his impotent rage had been pitiful to behold. This travail
occurred in the first year of his affliction; later, he discovered,
as so many others have done in a like extremity, that time accustoms
the mind to anything: he was now resigned to his misfortune. His
sufferings had endowed him with a great tolerance and a vast
instinct of sympathy for all living things, qualities which are
nearly always lacking in young men of his present age, which was
twenty-nine. The rest of the family stood in some awe of Harold;
realising his superiority of mind, they feared to be judged at the
bar of his opinion; also, he had some hundreds a year left him, in
his own right, by his mother: it was unthinkable that he should ever
marry. Another thing that differentiated him from his family was
that he possessed a sense of humour.

It may be as well to state that Harold plays a considerable part in
this story, which is chiefly concerned with a young woman, of whom