s of his pain.

Percival's utter disappearance was a nine days' wonder in Fordborough,
and when curiosity was dying out it flamed up again on the discovery
that the marriage was not only put off, but was off altogether. This
fact, considered in connection with the old squire's will, gave rise to
the idea that there was something queer about Mr. Percival Thorne--that
he had been found out at the last moment, and had lost both wife and
legacy in consequence. "No doubt it was hushed up on condition he should
take himself off. The best thing they could do, but how sad for an old
county family! Still, there will be black sheep, and what a mercy it was
that Miss Langton was saved from him!" So people talked, and generally
added that they could not tell why--just a feeling, you know--but they
never had liked that Percival Thorne.

In September, Godfrey Hammond cut a tiny slip out of the _Times_ and
sent it to the banished man: "On the 15th, the wife of Horace Thorne,
Esq., Brackenhill, Fordborough, of a son."

Percival ate his breakfast that morning with the scrap of paper by his
plate, and looked at it with fierce, defiant eyes. Lottie was avenged
indeed--she would never know how bitterly. He had sworn that he would
never think of Brackenhill, yet without his knowledge it had been the
background to his thoughts of everything. And now the cruel injustice of
his fate had taken a new lease of life in this baby boy: it would
outlive him, it would become eternal. Percival leapt to his feet with a
short laugh: "Well, that's over and done with! Good luck to the poor
little fellow! he's innocent enough. And I don't suppose he'll ever know
what a scoundrel his father was." So saying, he glanced at his watch and
marched off to his work.

Those three months had left their trace on him. He loathed his life; he
had no companions, no hope; he was absorbed in the effort to endure his
suffering. His indolence made his daily labor hateful as the treadmill.
He was fastidious, and his surroundings sickened him. His food disgusted
him, and so did the close atmosphere of the office. But he had chosen
his fate, and he had no heart to try to escape from it, since it gave
him the means of keeping body and soul together. Day after day, as that
hot September wore away, he looked out on a dreary range of roofs and
chimney-pots. He learned to know and hate every broken tile. From his
bedroom he looked into a narrow back yard, deep like a well, at the