y became responsible for the boy's
maintenance while boyhood lasted, and I believe it was not customary
to send out lads under the age of ten or twelve years. After a time
the people who took these lads into their service were, theoretically,
supposed to allow them some small wage, in addition to providing them
with a home.

It was rather a blow to my self-esteem, I remember, to see my
companions being removed from the institution one by one as time ran
on, and to note that nobody appeared to want me. I may have been
somewhat less sturdy than the average run of 'inmates,' but I think we
were all on the spare and lean side. It is possible, however, that in
view of my father's legacy to St. Peter's, the authorities felt it
incumbent upon them to keep me. The departure of a boy always had an
unsettling effect upon me; and when, as happened now and again, an
ex-inmate paid us a visit on a Sunday, possibly with members of the
family with whom he worked, I was filled with yearning interest in the
life of the world outside our island farm and workshop.

But these yearnings of mine were quite vague; mere amorphous
emanations of the mind, partaking of the nature of nostalgia, and
giving birth to nothing in the shape of plans, nor even of definite
desires. Then, suddenly, this vague uneasiness became the dominant
factor in my daily life, as the result of one of those apparently
haphazard chances upon which human progress and development so often
seem to pivot.

In the late afternoon of a visitors' Sunday, as I was making my way
down to the milking-yard with a pail on either arm, my eyes fell upon
the broad shoulders of a man who was leaning contemplatively over the
slip-rails of the yard. The sight of those shoulders sent a thrill
right through me; it touched the marrow of my spine. I, who had
thought myself the most forlorn and friendless of orphans; I had a
friend, and he was here before me. There was no need to see his face.
I knew those shoulders.

'Ted!' I cried. And positively I had to exercise deliberate
self-restraint to prevent myself from rushing at our _Livorno_ friend and
factotum, and flinging my arms about him, as in infantile days I had
been wont to make embracing leaps at Amelia from the kitchen table of
the house off Russell Square.

'God spare me days! Is it you, then, chum?' exclaimed Ted, as he swung
round on his high heels. (In those days the Sunday rig of men like Ted
Reilly comprised much-polished, p