such as illnesses
and coddling restrictions and drawn-out dullness. Without his
imagination, which was rampant under the spur of loneliness, he would
have succumbed long ago.

Mrs. de Ropp would never, in her honestest moments, have confessed to
herself that she disliked Conradin, though she might have been dimly
aware that thwarting him "for his good" was a duty which she did not
find particularly irksome. Conradin hated her with a desperate
sincerity which he was perfectly able to mask. Such few pleasures as
he could contrive for himself gained an added relish from the
likelihood that they would be displeasing to his guardian, and from the
realm of his imagination she was locked out--an unclean thing, which
should find no entrance.

In the dull, cheerless garden, overlooked by so many windows that were
ready to open with a message not to do this or that, or a reminder that
medicines were due, he found little attraction. The few fruit-trees
that it contained were set jealously apart from his plucking, as though
they were rare specimens of their kind blooming in an arid waste; it
would probably have been difficult to find a market-gardener who would
have offered ten shillings for their entire yearly produce. In a
forgotten corner, however, almost hidden behind a dismal shrubbery, was
a disused tool-shed of respectable proportions, and within its walls
Conradin found a haven, something that took on the varying aspects of a
playroom and a cathedral. He had peopled it with a legion of familiar
phantoms, evoked partly from fragments of history and partly from his
own brain, but it also boasted two inmates of flesh and blood. In one
corner lived a ragged-plumaged Houdan hen, on which the boy lavished an
affection that had scarcely another outlet. Further back in the gloom
stood a large hutch, divided into two compartments, one of which was
fronted with close iron bars. This was the abode of a large
polecat-ferret, which a friendly butcher-boy had once smuggled, cage
and all, into its present quarters, in exchange for a long-secreted
hoard of small silver. Conradin was dreadfully afraid of the lithe,
sharp-fanged beast, but it was his most treasured possession. Its very
presence in the tool-shed was a secret and fearful joy, to be kept
scrupulously from the knowledge of the Woman, as he privately dubbed
his cousin. And one day, out of Heaven knows what material, he spun
the beast a wonderful name, and from that m