fe. From that moment I
had become a changed being, solitary and sometimes morose. I would
come and sit staring at the ocean, meditating on tilings in general,
but chiefly on things connected with cripples, asking myself, as now,
whether life would be bearable on crutches.

At my heart were misery and anger and such revolt as is, I hope,
rarely found in the heart of a child. I had sat down outside the
rails at this most dangerous point along the cliff, wondering whether
or not it would crumble beneath me. For this lameness coming to me,
who had been so active, who had been, indeed, the little athlete and
pugilist of the sands, seemed to have isolated me from my
fellow-creatures to a degree that is inconceivable to me now. A
stubborn will and masterful pride made me refuse to accept a disaster
such as many a nobler soul than mine has, I am conscious, borne with
patience. My nature became soured by asking in vain for sympathy at
home; my loneliness drove me--silent, haughty, and aggressive--to
haunt the churchyard, and sit at the edge of the cliff, gazing
wistfully at the sea and the sands which could not be reached on
crutches. Like a wounded sea-gull, I retired and took my trouble
alone.

How could I help taking it alone when none would sympathise with me?
My brother Frank called me 'The Black Savage,' and I half began to
suspect myself of secret impulses of a savage kind. Once I heard my
mother murmur, as she stroked Frank's rosy cheeks and golden curls,
'My poor Henry is a strange, proud boy!' Then, looking from my
crutches to Frank's beautiful limbs, she said, 'How providential that
it was not the elder! Providence is kind.' She meant kind to the
House of Aylwin. I often wonder whether she guessed that I heard her.
I often wonder whether she knew how I had loved her.

This is how matters stood with me on that summer afternoon, when I
sat on the edge of the cliff in a kind of dull, miserable dream.
Suddenly, at the moment when the huge mass of clouds had covered the
entire surface of the water between Flinty Point and Needle Point
with their rich purple shadow, it seemed to me that the waves began
to sparkle and laugh in a joyful radiance which they were making for
themselves. And at that same moment an unwonted sound struck my ear
from the churchyard behind me--a strange sound indeed in that
deserted place--that of a childish voice singing.

Was, then, the mighty ocean writing symbols for an unhappy child to
rea