daughter of a Shropshire farmer. The death of his wife's relatives led him to settle on the farm their family had tenanted for generations, and it was at Wilcote Grange that his three children were born.

Fifteen years separated the elder son from the younger; between them came a daughter, who married early and left the neighbourhood. Four years after Desmond's birth the old man died, leaving the boy to the guardianship of his brother.

There lay the seed of trouble. No brothers could have been more unlike than the two sons of Captain Burke. Richard was made on a large and powerful scale; he was hard-working, methodical, grasping, wholly unimaginative, and in temper violent and domineering. Slighter and less robust, though not less healthy, Desmond was a boy of vivid imagination, high-strung, high-spirited, his feelings easily moved, his pride easily wounded. His brother was too dull and stolid to understand him, taking for deliberate malice what was but boyish mischief, and regarding him as sullen when he was only dreamily thoughtful.

As a young boy Desmond kept as much as possible out of his brother's way. But as he grew older he came more directly under Richard's control, with the result that they were now in a constant state of feud. Their mother, a woman of sweet temper but weak will, favoured her younger son in secret; she learnt by experience that open intervention on his behalf did more harm than good.

Desmond had two habits which especially moved his brother to anger. He was fond of roaming the country alone for hours together; he was fond of reading. To Richard each was a waste of time. He never opened a book, save a manual of husbandry, or a ready reckoner; he could conceive of no reason for walking, unless it were the business of the farm. Nothing irritated him more than to see Desmond stretched at length with his nose in Mr. Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, or a volume of Hakluyt's Voyages, or perhaps Mr. Oldys's Life of Sir Walter Raleigh. And as he himself never dreamed by day or by night, there was no chance of his divining the fact that Desmond, on those long solitary walks of his, was engaged chiefly in dreaming, not idly, for in his dreams he was always the centre of activity, greedy for doing.

These day-dreams constituted almost the sole joy of Desmond's life. When he was quite a little fellow he would sprawl on the bank near Tyrley Castle and weave romances about the Norman barons whose home it had been--romances in which he bore a strenuous part. He knew every interesting spot in the neighbourhood: Salisbury Hill, where the Yorkist leader pitched his camp before the battle of Blore Heath; Audley Brow, where Audley the Lancastrian lay watching his foe; above all Styche Hall, whence a former Clive had ridden forth to battle against the king, and where his namesake, the present Robert Clive, had been born. He imagined himself each of those bold warriors in turn, and saw himself, now a knight in mail, now a gay cavalier of Rupert's, now a bewigged Georgian gentleman in frock and pantaloons, but always with sword in hand.

No name sang a merrier tune in Desmond's imagination than the name of Robert Clive. Three years before, when he was imbibing Latin, Greek, and Hebrew under Mr. Burslem at the grammar school on the hill, the amazing news came one day that Bob Clive, the wild boy who had terrorized the tradespeople, plagued his master, led the school in tremendous fights with the town boys, and suffered more birchings than any scholar of his time--Bob Clive, the scapegrace who had been packed off to India as a last resource, had turned out, as his father said, "not such a booby after all,"--had indeed proved himself to be a military genius. How Desmond thrilled when the old schoolmaster read out the glorious news of Clive's defence of Arcot with a handful of men against an overwhelming host! How he glowed when the schoolroom rang with the cheers of the boys, and when, a half-holiday being granted, he rushed forth with the rest to do battle in the churchyard with the town boys, and helped to lick them thoroughly in honour of Clive!

From that moment there was for Desmond but one man in the world, and that man was Robert Clive. In the twinkling of an eye he became the devoutest of hero-worshippers. He coaxed Mr. Burslem to let him occupy Clive's old desk, and with his fists maintained the privilege against all comers. The initials "R.C." roughly cut in the oak never lost their fascination for him. He walked out day after day to Styche Hall, two miles away, and pleased himself with the thought that his feet trod the very spots once trodden by Bob Clive. Not an inch of the route from Hall to school--the meadow-path into Longslow, the lane from Longslow to Shropshire Street, Little Street, Church Street, the churchyard--was unknown to him: Bob Clive had known them all. He feasted on the oft-told stories of Clive's boyish escapades: how he had bundled a watchman into the bulks and made him prisoner there by closing down and fastening the shutters; how he had thrown himself across the current of a torrential gutter to divert the stream into the cellar shop of a tradesman who had offended him; above all, that feat of his when, ascending the spiral turret-stair of the church, he had lowered himself down from the parapet, and, astride upon a gargoyle, had worked his way along it until he could secure a stone that lay in its mouth, the perilous and dizzy adventure watched by a breathless throng in the churchyard below. The Bob Clive who had done these things was now doing greater deeds in India; and Desmond Burke sat day after day at his desk, gazing at the entrancing "R.C." and doing over again in his own person the exploits of which all Market Drayton was proud, and he the proudest.

But at the age of fourteen his brother took him from school, though Mr. Burslem had pleaded that he might remain longer and afterwards proceed to the university. He was set to do odd jobs about the farm. To farming itself he had no objection; he was fond of animals and would willingly have spent his life with them. But he did object to drudging for a hard and inconsiderate taskmaster such as his brother was, and the work he was compelled to do became loathsome to him, and bred a spirit of discontent and rebellion. The further news of Clive's exploits in India, coming at long intervals, set wild notions beating in Desmond's head, and made him long passionately for a change. At times he thought of running away: his father had run away and carved out a successful career, why should not he do the same? But he had never quite made up his mind to cut the knot.

Meanwhile it became known in Market Drayton that Clive had returned to England. Rumour credited him with fabulous wealth. It was said that he drove through London in a gold coach, and outshone the King himself in the splendour of his attire. No report was too highly coloured to find easy credence among the simple country folk. Clive was indeed rich: he had a taste for ornate dress, and though neither so wealthy nor so gaily apparelled as rumour said, he was for a season the lion of London society. The directors of the East India Company toasted him as "General" Clive, and presented him with a jewelled sword as a token of their sense of his services on the Coromandel coast. No one suspected at the time that his work was of more than local importance and would have more far-reaching consequences than the success of a trading company. Clive had, in fact, without knowing it, laid the foundations of a vast empire.

At intervals during two years scraps of news about Clive filtered through to his birthplace. His father had left the