ve--in many ways healthy--only just
this one defect."

The horror of that week never passed away from him. To the end of his
life he remembered the excuses--the consolations that the child would
live; suffered very little, if at all; would walk with crutches; would
certainly live. God was more merciful. A window was opened too wide on a
draughty day--after a short, painless illness his daughter died. But
the lesson he had learnt so glibly at Cambridge should be heeded now; no
child should ever be born to him again.

XXII

That same term there took place at Dunwood House another event. With
their private tragedy it seemed to have no connection; but in time
Rickie perceived it as a bitter comment. Its developments were
unforeseen and lasting. It was perhaps the most terrible thing he had to
bear.

Varden had now been a boarder for ten months. His health had broken in
the previous term,--partly, it is to be feared, as the result of the
indifferent food--and during the summer holidays he was attacked by a
series of agonizing earaches. His mother, a feeble person, wished to
keep him at home, but Herbert dissuaded her. Soon after the death of the
child there arose at Dunwood House one of those waves of hostility of
which no boy knows the origin nor any master can calculate the course.
Varden had never been popular--there was no reason why he should be--but
he had never been seriously bullied hitherto. One evening nearly the
whole house set on him. The prefects absented themselves, the bigger
boys stood round and the lesser boys, to whom power was delegated, flung
him down, and rubbed his face under the desks, and wrenched at his ears.
The noise penetrated the baize doors, and Herbert swept through and
punished the whole house, including Varden, whom it would not do to
leave out. The poor man was horrified. He approved of a little healthy
roughness, but this was pure brutalization. What had come over his boys?
Were they not gentlemen's sons? He would not admit that if you herd
together human beings before they can understand each other the great
god Pan is angry, and will in the end evade your regulations and drive
them mad. That night the victim was screaming with pain, and the doctor
next day spoke of an operation. The suspense lasted a whole week.
Comment was made in the local papers, and the reputation not only of the
house but of the school was imperilled. "If only I had known," repeated
Herbert--"if only I had k