as all the Dop Doctor wanted.

Now, as the red South African sunset burned beyond the flattened western
ridge of the semicircle of irregular hills that fence in the unpretending
hamlet town that lies on the low central rise, Owen Saxham sat, as for his
miserable weekly wage he must sit, twice daily for two hours at a stretch,
enduring torments akin to those of the damned in Hell.

For these were the hours when he remembered most all that he had lost.

Remembrance, like the magic carpet of the Eastern story, carried him back
to a rambling old grey mansion, clothed with a great magnolia and many
roses, standing in old-time gardens, and shrubberies of laurel and ilex
and Spanish chestnut, and rhododendron, upon the South Dorset cliffs, that
are vanishing so slowly yet so surely in the maw of the rapacious sea.

Boom! In the heart of a still, foggy night, following a day of lashing
rain, and the boy Owen Saxham, whom the Dop Doctor remembered, would wake
upon his lavender-scented pillow in the low-pitched room with the heavy
ceiling-beams and the shallow diamond-paned casements, and call out to
David, dreaming in the other white bed, to plan an excursion with the
breaking of the day, to see how much more of their kingdom had toppled
over on those wave-smoothed rock-pavements far below, that were studded
with great and little fossils, as the schoolroom suet-pudding with the
frequent raisin.

More faces came. The boys' father, fair and florid, bluff, handsome, and
kindly, an English country gentleman of simple affectionate nature and
upright life. He came in weather-stained velveteen and low-crowned felt,
with the red setter-bitch at his heels, and the old sporting Manton
carried in the crook of his elbow, where the mother used to sew a leather
patch, always cut out of the palm-piece of one of the right-hand gloves
that were never worn out, never being put on. A dark-eyed, black-haired
Welsh mother, hot-tempered, keen-witted, humorous, sarcastic, passionately
devoted to her husband and his boys, David and Owen.

David and Owen. David was the elder, fair like the father, destined for
Harrow, Sandhurst, and the Army. Owen had dreamed of the Merchant Service,
until, having succeeded in giving the Persian kitten, overfed to repletion
by an admiring cook, a dose of castor-oil, and being allowed to aid the
local veterinary in setting the fox-terrier's broken leg, the revelation
of the hidden gift was vouchsafed to this bo