d,
upsetting glasses as he put his hand out, and bumping his head against
doors that were manifestly shut. There was a gray haze upon all his
world, and it narrowed month by month, until at last it left Black
Sheep almost alone with the flapping curtains that were so like
ghosts, and the nameless terrors of broad daylight that were only
coats on pegs after all.

Holidays came and holidays went, and Black Sheep was taken to see many
people whose faces were all exactly alike; was beaten when occasion
demanded, and tortured by Harry on all possible occasions; but
defended by Judy through good and evil report, though she hereby drew
upon herself the wrath of Aunty Rosa.

The weeks were interminable and Papa and Mamma were clean forgotten.
Harry had left school and was a clerk in a Banking-Office. Freed from
his presence, Black Sheep resolved that he should no longer be
deprived of his allowance of pleasure-reading. Consequently, when he
failed at school he reported that all was well, and conceived a large
contempt for Aunty Rosa as he saw how easy it was to deceive her. "She
says I'm a little liar when I don't tell lies, and now I do, she does
n't know," thought Black Sheep. Aunty Rosa had credited him in the
past with petty cunning and stratagem that had never entered into his
head. By the light of the sordid knowledge that she had revealed to
him he paid her back full tale. In a household where the most innocent
of his motives, his natural yearning for a little affection, had been
interpreted into a desire for more bread and jam or to ingratiate
himself with strangers and so put Harry into the background, his work
was easy. Aunty Rosa could penetrate certain kinds of hypocrisy, but
not all. He set his child's wits against hers and was no more beaten.
It grew monthly more and more of a trouble to read the schoolbooks,
and even the pages of the open-print story-books danced and were dim.
So Black Sheep brooded in the shadows that fell about him and cut him
off from the world, inventing horrible punishments for "dear Harry,"
or plotting another line of the tangled web of deception that he
wrapped round Aunty Rosa.

Then the crash came and the cobwebs were broken. It was impossible to
foresee everything. Aunty Rosa made personal inquiries as to Black
Sheep's progress and received information that startled her. Step by
step, with a delight as keen as when she convicted an underfed
housemaid of the theft of cold meats, she