IV. TORPIDS
V. FELLOWSHIP
VI. A REVELATION
VII. REFORM
VIII. VERNEY BOSCOBEL
IX. BLACK SPOTS
X. DECAPITATION
XI. SELF-QUESTIONING
XII. "LORD'S"
XIII. "IF I PERISH, I PERISH"
XIV. GOOD NIGHT

THE HILL

CHAPTER I

THE MANOR

"Five hundred faces, and all so strange!
Life in front of me--home behind,
I felt like a waif before the wind
Tossed on an ocean of shock and change.

"_Chorus_. Yet the time may come, as the years go by,
When your heart will thrill
At the thought of the Hill,
And the day that you came so strange and shy."

The train slid slowly out of Harrow station.

Five minutes before, a man and a boy had been walking up and down the
long platform. The boy wondered why the man, his uncle, was so
strangely silent. Then, suddenly, the elder John Verney had placed his
hands upon the shoulders of the younger John, looking down into eyes as
grey and as steady as his own.

"You'll find plenty of fellows abusing Harrow," he said quietly; "but
take it from me, that the fault lies not in Harrow, but in them. Such
boys, as a rule, do not come out of the top drawer. Don't look so
solemn. You're about to take a header into a big river. In it are
rocks and rapids; but you know how to swim, and after the first plunge
you'll enjoy it, as I did, amazingly."

"Ra--ther," said John.

In the New Forest, where John had spent most of his life at his uncle's
place of Verney Boscobel, this uncle, his dead father's only brother,
was worshipped as a hero. Indeed he filled so large a space in the
boy's imagination, that others were cramped for room. John Verney in
India, in Burmah, in Africa (he took continents in his stride), moved
colossal. And when uncle and nephew met, behold, the great traveller
stood not much taller than John himself! That first moment, the
instant shattering of a precious delusion, held anguish. But now, as
the train whirled away the silent, thin, little man, he began to expand
again. John saw him scaling heights, cutting a path through
impenetrable forests, wading across dismal swamps, an ever-moving
figure, seeking the hitherto unknowable and irreclaimable, introducing
order where chaos reigned supreme, a world-famous pioneer.

How good to think that John Verney was _his_ uncle, blood of his blood,
his, his, his--for all time!

And, long ago, John, senior, had come to Harrow; had felt what John,
junior, felt to the co