t that he had
been the messenger and had discharged his trust. But presently it all
came to him, as he lay quietly with his aching head pressed against the
cool pillow. Geoff had encountered many new experiences in the last two
years of his life, but he had not known at any time what personal violence
was. Everybody round him had made much of him; his delicate health had
always been in the thoughts of those who were about him, and perhaps the
rank to which he was so indifferent, of which he was scarcely conscious.
Till Theo had appeared upon the scene, Geoff had been the central figure
in his own little world. Since that time, the boy had suffered with a
magnanimity which few men could have equalled a gradual deposition
from most of the things he prized most. He was no longer first; he
had partially lost the mother who for so long had been his companion
and playfellow as well as the chief object in his existence. Many
humiliations had come to the keen feelings and sensitive heart of the
little dethroned boy. Many a complaint and reproach had been on his
lips, though none had got utterance. But now a deeper indignity still
had befallen him. As Geoff lay in the room to which he had been banished
to be out of Warrender's sight, all this swept across his little soul
like a tempest. He remembered the suffocating sensation in his throat,
the red mist in his eyes, the feeling that he had but a moment left in
which to deliver his message; and then the giddy whirl of movement as he
was flung away like a rag or a stone, the crash in his ears, the sharp
blow which brought back his scattered faculties for a moment, only to
banish them again in the momentary unconsciousness which brought all the
tingling and thrilling into his ears of which he had not yet got free.
How had all this come about? It was Warrender who had seized him, who
had flung him upon the floor, who had--had he? tried to kill him? had
he tried to kill him? Was that what Warrender meant? A wild flood of
feeling, resentment, terror, desire for revenge, swept through Geoff's
mind. Warrender, to whom already he owed so much; Warrender, who had
taken his mother from him, and his home, and everything he cared for in
the world,--Warrender now wanted to kill him! If mamma knew! Mamma had
not ceased to care for her boy. Even now that the babies had come she
still loved Geoff,--and if she knew! The boy jumped up from his couch.
He was pale and trembling, and the cut on his for