ing and blood-stained,
heart-broken with shame and loneliness and despair.

2

His relationship with the Brothers Banditti across the hill was
peculiar. It was one of Dr. Stonehouse's many theories of life that
children should be independent, untrammelled alike by parental
restrictions and education, and except on the very frequent occasions
when this particular theory collided with his comfort and his
conviction that his son was being disgracefully neglected, Robert lived
the life of a lonely and illiterate guttersnipe. He did not know he
was lonely. He did not want to play with the other children in the
Terrace. But he did know that for some mysterious reason or other they
did not want to play with him. The trim nursemaids drew their starched
and shining darlings to one side when he passed, and he in turn scowled
at them with a fierce contempt to which, all unknown, was added two
drops of shame and bitterness. But even among the real guttersnipes of
the neighbourhood he was an outcast. He did not know how to play with
other children. He was ignorant alike of their ways and their games,
and, stiff with an agonizing shyness, he bore himself before them
arrogantly. It was natural that they in turn hated him. Like young
wolves they flaired a member of a strange and alien pack--a creature
who broke their unwritten laws--and at first they had hunted him
pitilessly, throwing mud and stones at him, pushing him from the
pavement, jeering at him. But they had not reckoned with the
Stonehouse rages. He had flung himself on them. He had fought them
singly, by twos and threes--the whole pack. In single combat he had
thrashed the grocer's boy who was several inches taller and two years
older than himself. But even against a dozen his white-hot fury, which
ignored alike pain and discretion, made him dangerous and utterly
unbeatable. From all encounters he had come out battered,
blood-stained, literally in shreds, but clothed in lonely victory.

Now they only jeered at him from a safe distance. They made cruel and
biting references to the Stonehouse _menage_, flying with mock shrieks
of terror when he was unwise enough to attempt pursuit. Usually he
went his way, his head up, swallowing his tears.

But the Brothers Banditti belonged to him.

On the other side of the hill was a large waste plot of ground. A
builder with more enterprise than capital had begun the erection of
up-to-date villas but had gone b