d growing-pains, as young minds of any
intellectual and poetic worth needs must. The possibility of moral
experience, incalculable in extent as that golden-gray outspread of
creeping, increasing vapour overhead, presented itself to him. The
vastness of life touched him to fear. He struggled to find a limit,
clothing his effort in childish realism of statement.

"But in that locked-up room, Uncle Roger, you can't have dead
women--dead wives."

Ormiston laughed quietly.

"You hit out pretty straight from the shoulder, master Dick," he said.
"Happily I can reassure you on one point. All manner of things are hung
up in there--some ugly--almost all ugly, now, to my eyes, though some
of them had charming ways with them once upon a time. But, I give you
my word, neither ugly nor charming, dead nor alive, are there any
wives."

The boy considered a moment, then said stoutly, "I wouldn't go in there
again. I'd lock the door and throw away the key."

"Wait till your time comes! You'll find that is precisely what you
can't do."

"Then I'd fetch them out, once and for all, and bury them."

The carriage had turned in at the lodge gate. Soon a long, low, white
house and range of domed conservatories came into view.

"Heroic remedies!" Ormiston remarked, amused at the boy's vehemence.
"But no doubt they do succeed now and then. To tell you the truth,
Dick, I have been thinking of something of the kind myself. Only I'm
afraid I shall need somebody to help me in carrying out so extensive a
funeral."

"Anybody would be glad enough to help you," Richard declared, with a
strong emphasis on the pronoun.

"Ah! but the bother is anybody can't help one. Only one person in all
this great rough and tumble of a world can really help one. And often
one finds out who that person is a little bit too late. However, here
we are. Perhaps we shall know more about it all in the next half hour,
if these good people are at home."

In point of fact the good people in question were not at home.
Ormiston, holding reins and whip in one hand, felt for his card-case.

"So we've had our journey for nothing you see, Dick," he said.

And to Richard the words sounded regretful. Moreover, the drama of this
expedition seemed to him shorn of its climax. He knew there should be
something more, and pushed for it.

"You haven't asked for Mary," he said. "And I thought we came on
purpose to see Mary. She won't like us to go away like this. Do ask."

Col