my father carried me away, and though he never
uttered the flattering words I longed to hear, he repeated the story
often, and made the red hall glow with beams of my father's image. My
walks and rides were divided between the road he must have followed
toward London, bearing me in his arms, and the vacant place of Kiomi's
camp. Kiomi stood for freedom, pointing into the darkness I wished
to penetrate that I might find him. If I spoke of him to my aunt she
trembled. She said, 'Yes, Harry, tell me all you are thinking about,
whatever you want to know'; but her excessive trembling checked me, and
I kept my feelings to myself--a boy with a puzzle in his head and hunger
in his heart. At times I rode out to the utmost limit of the hour giving
me the proper number of minutes to race back and dress for dinner at
the squire's table, and a great wrestling I had with myself to turn my
little horse's head from hills and valleys lying East; they seemed
to have the secret of my father. Blank enough they looked if ever I
despaired of their knowing more than I. My Winter and Summer were the
moods of my mind constantly shifting. I would have a week of the belief
that he was near Riversley, calling for me; a week of the fear that he
was dead; long dreams of him, as travelling through foreign countries,
patting the foreheads of boys and girls on his way; or driving
radiantly, and people bowing. Radiantly, I say: had there been touches
of colour in these visions, I should have been lured off in pursuit
of him. The dreams passed colourlessly; I put colouring touches to the
figures seen in them afterward, when I was cooler, and could say, 'What
is the use of fancying things?' yet knew that fancying things was a
consolation. By such means I came to paint the mystery surrounding my
father in tender colours. I built up a fretted cathedral from what
I imagined of him, and could pass entirely away out of the world by
entering the doors.

Want of boys' society as well as hard head-work produced this mischief.
My lessons were intermittent Resident tutors arrived to instruct me, one
after another. They were clergymen, and they soon proposed to marry my
aunt Dorothy, or they rebuked the squire for swearing. The devil was in
the parsons, he said: in his time they were modest creatures and stuck
to the bottle and heaven. My aunt was of the opinion of our neighbours,
who sent their boys to school and thought I should be sent likewise.

'No, no,' said