ure shot through him.
Yes, he must keep it, he thought; he could not affront his young
manliness and independence by returning it. "It is what I should have
done in his case," he said to himself. And then he thought that he
would lay out part in buying a keepsake for Anna. There was a little
brooch she had much admired, a mere toy of a thing, a tiny quiver full
of arrows, studded with small diamonds and tipped with a pearl. The
shop where they had noticed it was close by, and he would buy it at
once. But as Malcolm hurried off on this kindly errand he little
realised what the joy of that possession would be to Anna Sheldon.

CHAPTER III

A PAGE OF ANCIENT HISTORY

Before we can bring happiness to others, we must first be happy
ourselves; nor will happiness abide within us unless we confer it on
others.--MAETERLINCK.

During the preceding hour or two Malcolm's face had worn its brightest
and most youthful aspect--the society of Cedric had roused him and
taken him out of himself; but as he approached the handsome and
imposing-looking house where his mother lived, his countenance resumed
its normal gravity.

To him it had been a house of bondage, and he had never regarded it as
a home; his environment from boyhood had not suited him, and though he
loved his mother, and gave her, at least outwardly, the obedience and
honour that were due to her, there had not been that sympathy between
them that one would have expected from an only son to a widowed mother.

Malcolm's father had died when he was about six years old, but his
infant recollections of him were wonderfully vivid. He remembered
waking up one night from some childish dream that had frightened him,
to see a kind face bending over him, and to feel warm, strong arms
lifting him up.

"Never mind, Sonny, father's with you," he heard a cheery voice say.

"Daddy's wid baby," he repeated drowsily, as he nestled down in his
father's arms. "Nice, nice daddy," and two hot little hands patted his
face.

Then a voice in the distance said, "You are spoiling him, Rupert.
Malcolm ought to be a brave boy and not cry on account of a silly
dream." Of course it was his mother who spoke; even from his infancy
her method of education had been bracing. "Baby isn't a boy, movver,"
he had once said in extenuation of some childish fault; "movver must
not punish Baby."

The memories of early childhood are always vague and hazy; but in the
distance, among shifting form