t gratefully,
HORACE ANNESLEY VACHELL

BEECHWOOD,
_February 22, 1905_

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I. THE MANOR 1
II. CAESAR 19
III. KRAIPALE 35
IV. TORPIDS 58
V. FELLOWSHIP 70
VI. A REVELATION 92
VII. REFORM 107
VIII. VERNEY BOSCOBEL 123
IX. BLACK SPOTS 140
X. DECAPITATION 158
XI. SELF-QUESTIONING 173
XII. "LORD'S" 189
XIII. "IF I PERISH, I PERISH" 211
XIV. GOOD NIGHT 230

CHAPTER I

_The Manor_

"Five hundred faces, and all so strange!
Life in front of me--home behind,
I felt like a waif before the wind
Tossed on an ocean of shock and change.

"_Chorus._ Yet the time may come, as the years go by,
When your heart will thrill
At the thought of the Hill,
And the day that you came so strange and shy."

The train slid slowly out of Harrow station.

Five minutes before, a man and a boy had been walking up and down the
long platform. The boy wondered why the man, his uncle, was so strangely
silent. Then, suddenly, the elder John Verney had placed his hands upon
the shoulders of the younger John, looking down into eyes as grey and as
steady as his own.

"You'll find plenty of fellows abusing Harrow," he said quietly; "but
take it from me, that the fault lies not in Harrow, but in them. Such
boys, as a rule, do not come out of the top drawer. Don't look so
solemn. You're about to take a header into a big river. In it are rocks
and rapids; but you know how to swim, and after the first plunge you'll
enjoy it, as I did, amazingly."

"Ra--ther," said John.

In the New Forest, where John had spent most of his life at his uncle's
place of Verney Boscobel, this uncle, his dead father's only brother,
was worshipped as a hero. Indeed he filled so large a space in the boy's
imagination, that others were cramped for room. John Verney in India, in
Burmah, in Africa (he took continents in his stride), moved colossal.
And when uncle and nephew met, behold, the great traveller stood not
much taller than John himself! That first moment, th