ellent gentlemen on the other side of the Atlantic have made very
different opinions popular from the opinions that prevailed with me in
my youth. Indeed, I myself have now been long used to associate with the
great folk of the earth, and have found them in all essential matters
very much like other men. I have had the honour of including more than
one king amongst my acquaintances, and have liked some and not liked
others, just as if they were plain Tom or Harry. But in the days of my
youth I should have as soon expected to be welcomed at St. James's as to
be welcomed in the great house where Lancelot's uncle lived.

CHAPTER III

THE ALEHOUSE BY THE RIVER.

Three years after I went to learn under Mr. Davies, of Cliff Street, my
father died.

I remember with a kind of terror still, through all these years, when
death of every kind has been so familiar to me, how the news of that
death came upon me. I had no realisation of what death meant till then.
I had heard of people dying, of course; had watched the black
processions creeping, plumed and solemn, along the streets to the
churchyard; had noted how in any circle of friends now one and now
another falls away and returns to earth. I knew that all must die, that
I must die myself, as I knew a lesson got by heart which has little
meaning to the unawakened ear. But now it came on me with such a
stabbing knowledge that for a little while I was almost crazy with the
grief and the fear.

But the sorrow, like all sorrows, lessened with time. There was my
mother to cheer; there was my schooling to keep; there was the shop to
look after.

My father had thriven well enough to lay by a small store, but my mother
kept the shop on, partly for the sake of my father, whose pride it was,
partly because it gave her something to occupy her widowed life, and
partly because, as Mr. Davies pointed out to her, there would be a
business all ready for me when I was old enough to step into it. In the
meantime my life was simple enough. When I was not taking my schooling
with Lancelot I was tending the shop with mother; and when I was doing
neither of these things I was free to wander about the town much as I
pleased.

Our town was of a tidy size, running well back from the sea up a gentle
and uneven acclivity, which made all the streets that stemmed from the
border slightly steep, and some of them exceedingly so. Upon the coast
line, naturally enough, lay the busiest part of th