hey never raised their
heads again. And the Banditti had returned home whooping and drunk
with victory and the newly discovered joy of battle. His hand was
naturally against all authority. He led them in dark plottings against
their governesses and nursemaids, and even against the Law itself as
personified by an elderly, somewhat pompous policeman whose beat
included their territory. On foggy afternoons they pealed the
doorbells of such as had complaint against them, and from concealment
gloated over the indignant maids who had been lured down several
flights of stairs to answer their summons. And no longer were they
nice children who returned home clean and punctual to the bosom of
their families.

Very rarely had the Banditti showed signs of revolt against Robert's
despotism, and each time he had won them back with ease which sowed the
first seeds of cynicism in his mind. It happened to be another of the
elder Stonehouse's theories--which he had been known to expound
eloquently to his creditors--that children should be taught the use of
money, and at such times as the Stonehouse family prospered Robert's
pocket bulged with sums that staggered the very imagination of his
followers. He appeared among them like a prince--lavish, reckless,
distributing chocolates of superior lineage with a haughty magnificence
that brought the disaffected cringing to his feet.

But even with them he was not really happy. At heart he was still a
strange little boy, different from the rest. There was a shadow over
him. He knew that apart from him they were nice, ordinary children,
and that he was a man full of sorrows and mystery and bitter
experience. He despised them. They could be bought and bribed and
bullied. But if he could have been ordinary as they were, with quiet,
ordinary homes and people who loved one another and paid their bills,
he would have cried with joy.

When he did anything particularly bold and reckless he looked out of
the corners of his eyes at Frances Wilmot to see if at last he had
impressed her. For she eluded him. She never defied his authority,
and very rarely took part in his escapades. But she was always there,
sometimes in the midst, sometimes just on the fringe, like a bird,
intent on business of its own, coming and going in the heart of human
affairs. Sometimes she seemed hardly to be aware of him, and sometimes
she treated him as though there were an unspoken intimacy between them
which