eed?" said the Critic.

"John Verney will tell you all about it," said Mr. Desmond, glancing
cheerily at our hero. His was ever the habit to draw out the humblest of
his guests.

So John recited how young Anthony Ashley, standing on the Hill, just
below the churchyard, chanced to see a pauper's coffin fall to the
ground and burst open, revealing the pitiful corpse within, and how he
had exclaimed in horror, "Good heavens! Can this be permitted simply
because the man was poor and friendless?" And how, then and there, the
boy had sworn to devote his powers to the amelioration of
poverty-stricken lives.

"Yes," said Mr. Desmond. "He told me that the next fifteen minutes
decided his career. Ah, he succeeded greatly. Why, when I was at Harrow
we used to cross from Waterloo to Euston through some of the worst slums
in the world. You boys can't realize what they looked like. And
Shaftesbury's work and example wiped them out of our civilization."[27]

When John returned to his uncle's house of Verney Boscobel (his home
since his father's death), Caesar Desmond accompanied him. Then it seemed
to John that his cup brimmed, that everything he desired had been
granted unto him. Verney Boscobel stood in the heart of the great
forest, one of the few large manors within that splendid demesne. The
boys arrived at Lyndhurst Road Station late in the evening, long after
dusk, and were driven in darkness through Bartley and Minstead up to the
high-lying moors of Stoneycross. Next morning, early, John woke his
friend, and opened the shutters.

"Jolly morning," he said. "Have a look at the Forest, old chap."

Caesar jumped out of bed, and drew a long breath.

"Ah!" he exclaimed; "it's fairyland."

Frost had silvered all things below. Above, motionless upon the blue
heavens, as if still frozen by the icy fingers of a December night, were
some aerial transparencies of aqueous vapour, amethystine in colour,
with edges of white foam. In the east, obscured, but not concealed, by
grey mist, hung the crimson orb of the sun. From it faint rays shot
forth, touching the clouds beneath, which, roused, so to speak, out of
sleep, drifted lethargically in a southerly direction.

"Underneath the young grey dawn
A multitude of dense, white, fleecy clouds
Were wandering in thick flocks, ...
Shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind."

Desmond drew in his breath, sighing with purest delight. From the lawns
encompassing the house