ty night, then trudged sturdily on, guided by
the crunching of the gravel, as he strayed to right or left.

All at once, the trees began to sigh and creak--big drops struck his
face--at first spatteringly, then thicker together. Within half an hour
of his leaving the house, a heavy, wind-swept rain was pelting down; ten
minutes more and he was soaked to the skin.

Now it was that he began to fear for his money, which was more than half
in notes. He clenched his hands tightly over as much of it as he could
grasp, and plodded on determinedly. But the steady pelting of the rain
bewildered him. He wandered from the driveway--tried to find it again,
with hands and feet this time. Blown twigs and leaves began to strike
him. He walked against a tree--clung to it a moment, panting. Then
groped his way on again. But now he was hopelessly lost in the big Park.
A great, soggy mass of bracken stopped him. He skirted it--walked
against more trees. He would not admit in his fierce, dogged little
heart that he was lost. He kept rehearsing what he would say to the
station-master: "A first-class ticket to London, please. Here's the
money."

For nearly three hours the boy groped and stumbled in that maze of trees
through the driving rain. For some time he had been saying earnest
little prayers:

"Our Father who art in heaven ... please help me to get back to my
mother. Our Father ... please. Our Father ... please...."

* * * * *

When they found him he was lying unconscious on the sodden grass under
an elm--both hands clenched fast upon as much of the notes and silver in
his pockets as he could grasp.

When he had been put to bed, and roused at last he was delirious. He
began calling frantically, "My money! my money!" They gave it to him.
Then had begun that monotonous chant of: "A first-class ticket to
London, please.... A ticket to London.... Here's the money.... I've got
the money."

This was why Bellamy did not wonder that Lady Wychcote fainted when he
told her that Bobby might die.

LVIII

And now Sophy descended into the darkness of darkness where death and
remorse sit brooding together--that vasty cavern of uttermost black
gloom which underlies the Valley of the Shadow. Faith does not walk
there nor hope. There a thousand years seem not as a day, but a day
seems as a thousand years.

As she watched beside her son, she felt a more rending anguish than when
she had given him birt