he forgetfully
put his weight on his left leg. He rubbed his knee, swallowed
painfully, and, leaving the word unfinished, limped haughtily from
the room.

He left the house, gloomily swinging his books from a spare length
of strap, and walking with care to ease his strains and bruises as
much as possible. He was very low in his mind, that boy. His
fortunes had reached the ebb-tide, but he had no hope of a rise.
He had no hope of anything. It was not even a consolation that,
through his talent for surprise in waylayings, it had lately been
thought necessary, by the Villard family, to have Egerton
accompanied to and from school by a man-servant. Nor was Hedrick
more deeply depressed by the certainty that both public and
domestic scandal must soon arise from the inevitable revelation of
his discontinuing his attendance at school without mentioning this
important change of career at home. He had been truant a full
fortnight, under brighter circumstances a matter for a lawless
pride--now he had neither fear nor vainglory. There was no room in
him for anything but dejection.

He walked two blocks in the direction of his school; turned a
corner; walked half a block; turned north in the alley which ran
parallel to Corliss Street, and a few moments later had cautiously
climbed into an old, disused refuse box which stood against the
rear wall of the empty stable at his own home. He pried up some
loose boards at the bottom of the box, and entered a tunnel which
had often and often served in happier days--when he had
friends--for the escape of Union officers from Libby Prison and
Andersonville. Emerging, wholly soiled, into a box-stall, he
crossed the musty carriage house and ascended some rickety steps
to a long vacant coachman's-room, next to the hayloft. He closed
the door, bolted it, and sank moodily upon a broken, old horsehair
sofa.

This apartment was his studio. In addition to the sofa, it
contained an ex-bureau, three chair-like shapes, a once
marble-topped table, now covered with a sheet of zinc, two empty
bird cages, and a condemned whatnot. The walls were rather
over-decorated in coloured chalks, the man-headed-snake motive
predominating; they were also loopholed for firing into the
hayloft. Upon the table lay a battered spy-glass, minus lenses,
and, nearby, two boxes, one containing dried corn-silk, the other
hayseed, convenient for the making of amateur cigarettes; the
smoker's outfit being completed by a neat