voice roused me. She stood as if she could not go near him. He had

always puzzled her so, he and his ways, and this seemed only another

enigma. Then thetruth dawned on her, she shrieked as if afraid of

him, ran a dozen steps back towards the trellis door and stopped and

clasped her ineffectual gloved hands, leaving me staring blankly,

too astonished forfeeling, at the carelessly flung limbs.

The same idea came to me also. I ran to her. "Mother!" I cried,

pale to the depths of myspirit, "IS HE DEAD?"

I had beenthinking two minutes before of the cold fruit pie that

glorified our Sunday dinner-table, and how I might perhaps get into

the tree at the end of the garden to read in the afternoon. Now an

immense fact had come down like a curtain and blotted out all my

childish world. My father was lying dead before my eyes… I

perceived that my mother was helpless and that things must he done.

"Mother!" I said, "we must get Doctor Beaseley,-and carry him

indoors."

CHAPTER THE THIRD

SCHOLASTIC

1

My formal education began in a small preparatory school in

Bromstead. I went there as a day boy. The charge for my

instruction was mainly set off by the periodic visits of my father

with a large bag of battered fossils to lecture to us upon geology.

I was one of those fortunate youngsters who take readily to school

work, I had agoodmemory, versatile interests and a considerable

appetite for commendation, and when I was barely twelve I got a

scholarship at the City Merchants School and was entrusted with a

scholar's railway season ticket to Victoria. After my father's

death a large and very animated and solidly built uncle in tweeds

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