cent carriage, ride behind those
beautiful animals with their pawing feet and arched necks? The small
boy stood still a moment to appreciate the greatness of the event.

"Are you afraid, Christopher?"

Resentment sprang to life. Yet it was almost well so transcendent a
moment should have its pin prick of annoyance. With a "No" of
ineffable scorn, Jim--or Christopher--the name was immaterial to
him--clambered up into the high carriage and wedged himself between
the elderly gentleman and the inquisitive driver, who had regained his
seat and the reins.

Christopher's experiences of driving were of a very limited nature,
and certainly they did not embrace anything like this. He had no
recollection of ever having travelled by train, and it was the
question of pace that fascinated him, the rapid, easy swinging
movement through the air, the fresh breeze rushing by, the distancing
of humbler wayfarers, all gave him a strange sense of exhilaration.
Years afterward, when flesh and blood were all too slow for him and he
was one of the best motorists in England, if not in Europe, he used to
recall the rapturous pleasure of that first drive of his, that first
introduction to the mad, tense joy of speed that ever after held him
in thrall.

The owner of the phaeton and the elderly gentleman whom he had called
Stapleton exchanged no remarks, but they both cast curious, thoughtful
glances at their small companion from time to time. They had to rouse
him from his rhapsody to ask the way at last. He answered concisely
and shortly with no touch of the local burr.

"How came you to be so far away?" demanded Jim's fine gentleman as
they were passing through the market-place.

Jim was engaged in superciliously ignoring the amazed stares of the
town boys who were apt to look down on the "workhouse kid," though he
attended the Whitmansworth school. Once past them he answered the
question vaguely.

"The master was out: I hadn't to do anything."

"And you had permission to wander where you liked?"

To this Jim did not reply. He had _not_ permission, but he counted on
the good nature of Mrs. Moss, with whom he was a favourite, to plead
his cause with her husband.

"Had you permission?" demanded his questioner again, bending down
suddenly to look in the boy's face with his disconcerting eyes.

It would have seemed to Jim on reflection a great deal more prudent
and quite as easy to have said "yes" as "no," but the "no" slipped
out, an