oment all things seemed
unsubstantial. Even the familiar Spire, powdered with gold by the
slanting rays of the sun, appeared thinly transparent against the rosy
mists behind it. The Hill, the solid Hill, rose out of the valley, a
lavender-coloured shade upon the horizon.

"He came here," continued Desmond, dreamily--John guessed that he was
speaking of the father--"a rich, prosperous man. I dare say he worked
like a slave in the city. And he wanted peace and quiet after the Stock
Exchange. Who wouldn't? And he planted out these gardens, thinking that
every plant would grow up and thrive, and his son with them. And then
the boy died; and the wife followed; and the enchanted castle became a
place of horror; and now it is a wilderness. Haunted? I should think it
was--haunted! I wish we'd never set foot in it. There's a curse on it."

"Let's go," said John.

"Too late. We'll stay now, and we'll come again, every Sunday. Wild and
desolate as things look, they will be lovely when we get back in summer.
Don't talk. I'm going to light a pipe."

Through the circling cloud of tobacco-smoke John stared at the face
which had illumined nearly every hour of his school-life. Its peculiar
vividness always amazed John, the vitality of it, and yet the perfect
delicacy. Scaife's handsome features were full of vitality also, but
coarseness underlay their bold lines and peered out of the keen,
flashing eyes. When the Caterpillar left Harrow he had said to John--

"Good-bye, Jonathan. Awful rot your going to such a hole as Oxford! One
has had quite enough schooling after five years here. It's settled I'm
going into the Guards. My father tells me that old Scaife tried to get
the Demon down on the Duke's list. But we don't fancy the Scaife brand."

Often and often John wondered whether Desmond saw the brand as plainly
as the Caterpillar and he did. Sometimes he felt almost sure that a
word, a look, a gesture betraying the bounder, had revolted Desmond;
but a few hours later the bounder bounded into favour again, captivating
eye and heart by some brilliant feat. And then his brains! He was so
diabolically clever. John could always recall his face as he lay back in
the chair in No. 15, sick, bruised, befuddled, and yet even in that
moment of extreme prostration able to "play the game," as he put it, to
defeat house-master and doctor by sheer strength of will and intellect.
It was Scaife who had persuaded Desmond to smoke.... Caesar's voice