Stapleton with a bundle of papers in his hand, and all these people looked at Jim in a perplexed way, except Mr. Aston, who appeared quite happy and unconcerned. 12

“Say good-bye to Mrs. Moss, Christopher,” he said authoritatively. “You are coming with me.”

“Where to?” demanded the boy with a sudden access of caution.

“To London.”

Christopher began to scramble up into the carriage and was unceremoniously hauled down.

“Manners, Christopher. Mrs. Moss is waiting to say good-bye.”

Now, Mrs. Moss had been very kind to the little waif and taken him to her motherly childless heart, and in spite of her excitement over this wonderful event, or because of it, she could not refrain from a few tears. Jim was not indifferent to the fact—any more than he had been to the lark’s song, but he secretly thought it very inconsiderate of her to cloud this extraordinary adventure with anything so depressing as tears. He was the more aggrieved as against his will, against all reason and all tradition of manliness, he found objectionable salt drops brimming up in his own eyes. A culminating point was reached, however, when Mrs. Moss fairly embraced him. It should be stated that on occasions and in private Jim had no sort of objection to being cuddled by Mrs. Moss, who was a comfortable, pillowy sort of person.

The ordeal was over at last and he was clambering up into the carriage when Mrs. Moss bethought her he had had no tea.

Mr. Aston protested they were going to stop at Basingstoke, but the good woman insisted on provisioning the boy with a wedge of cake and tucking a clean handkerchief of her own into his pocket.

“We shall sleep at Basingstoke, and I’ll send back his clothes by post,” said Mr. Aston. “No doubt we can get him some sort of temporary outfit there.”

Jim, who had been secretly afraid he would be relegated 13 to the back seat with the groom, breathed a sigh of relief as Mr. Aston mounted to his place. That gentleman apparently understood the innermost soul of the boy, for he gravely asked Mr. Stapleton to find room for a companion, and then with a toss of their proud heads Castor and Pollux moved off. Mr. Aston raised his hat courteously to Mrs. Moss, and Jim, observing, made an attempt to remove his own dingy little cap, a performance everyone took as a matter of course untill he had gone, when Mrs. Moss remembered it and exclaimed to her husband: “Didn’t I always say, Joseph, he wasn’t like the rest of them?”

But Joseph only said “Umph,” and went in doors.

“We will telegraph to Aymer from Basingstoke,” said Mr. Aston as they started, and after that there was silence.

The monotonous click-clack of the horses’ feet lulled the tired child into blissful drowsiness. He had had too many ups and downs in his eleven years of life to be alarmed at this unexpected turn of fortune, and he was still too young to grasp how great a change had been wrought in that life since the hot hour he had spent lying by the mile-stone on the Great Road.

As they clattered through the narrow streets of the country town in the light of the long July evening Christopher sat up and rubbed his eyes.

“I’ve been here before,” he volunteered.

Mr. Aston effected a skilful pass between a donkey cart and two perambulators.

“Yes, quite right, you have. What do you remember about it, Christopher?”

The boy looked dubious and a little distressed, but just then they passed a chemist’s shop.

“We went there,” he cried. “Mother got something for her cough, so she couldn’t have any supper. 14 We stayed at a horrid old woman’s, a nasty, cross thing.”

“You did not go to the Union, then?”

“No, we had some money, a whole shilling and some pennies.”

Mr. Aston said something under his breath and Mr. Stapleton murmured “tut-tut-tut.”

“That’s how we first missed the trail, Stapleton,” he said, and then as they walked up a steep hill he spoke to the boy.

“Christopher, I want you to tell me anything you remember about your mother and the old days if you wish it, but you must not talk about that to Aymer. It would make him unhappy.”

“Who is Aymer?” asked Christopher, not unreasonably.

“Aymer is my son, my eldest son. You are going to live with him.”

“Is he a boy like me?”

“No, he is quite big, grown up, but he can’t get about as you can, he is—a cripple.”

He said the words with a sort of forced jerk and half under his breath, but Christopher heard them and shivered.

“Do you live there, too?” he asked, pressing a little nearer the man who was no longer a stranger.

“Live where?”

“With the—your son.”

“Yes, I live there too. My boy couldn’t get on without me—and here’s the White Elephant, which means supper and bed for a tired young man. Jump down, Christopher.”

The spirit of waning July hung heavily over London. In mean streets and alleys it was inexpressibly dreary: the fagged inhabitants lacked even energy to quarrel.

But on the high ground westward of the Park, where big houses demand elbow-room and breathing space and even occasionally exclusive gardens, a little breeze sprang up at sundown and lingered on till dusk.

In this region lies one of the most beautiful houses in London, the country seat of some fine gentleman in Queen Anne’s day. It hid its beauties, however, from the public gaze, lying modestly back in a garden whose size had no claim to modesty at all. All one could see from the road, through the iron gates, was a glimpse of a wide portico, and a long row of windows. It stood high and in its ample garden the breeze ran riot, shaking the scent from orange and myrtle trees, from jasmine and roses, and wafting it in at the wide open windows of a room which, projecting from the house, seemed to take command of the garden.

It was a large room and the windows went from ceiling to floor. It was also a very beautiful room. In the gathering dusk the restful harmonies of its colours melted into soft, hazy blue, making it appear vaster than it really was. Also, it was unencumbered by much furniture and what there was so essentially fitted its place that it was unobtrusive. Three big canvases occupied the walls, indiscernible in the dim light, but masterpieces of world fame, heirlooms known all over Europe. There was a curious dearth of small objects and unessentials, nothing in all the 16 great space that could fatigue the eye or perplex the brain of the occupant.

The owner of the room was lying on a big sofa near one of the open windows. Within reach was a low bookcase, a table with an electric reading lamp, and a little row of electric bells, some scattered papers and an open telegram.

The man on the sofa lay quite still looking into the garden as it sunk from sight under the slowly falling veil of purple night.

He was evidently a tall man, with the head and shoulders of an athlete, and a face of such precise and unusual beauty that one’s instinct called out, “Here, then, God has planned a man.”

Aymer Aston, indeed, was not unlike his father, but far more regular in feature, more carefully hewn, and the serenity of the older face was lacking. Here was the face of a fighter, alive with the strong passions held in by a stronger will. There was almost riotous vitality expressed in his colouring, coppery-coloured hair and dark brows, eyes of surprising blueness and a tanned skin, for he spent hours lying