novelles to look at, I'll go up to the
garret and hide, and ye can ask Jenny no to tell."

She gave him a hunk of nuncheon and a bundle of her novelettes, and he
stole up to an empty garret and squatted on the bare boards. The sun
streamed through the skylight window and lay, an oblong patch, in the
centre of the floor. John noted the head of a nail that stuck gleaming
up. He could hear the pigeons _rooketty-cooing_ on the roof, and every
now and then a slithering sound, as they lost their footing on the
slates and went sliding downward to the rones. But for that, all was
still, uncannily still. Once a zinc pail clanked in the yard, and he
started with fear, wondering if that was his faither!

If young Gourlay had been the right kind of a boy he would have been in
his glory, with books to read and a garret to read them in. For to
snuggle close beneath the slates is as dear to the boy as the bard, if
somewhat diverse their reasons for seclusion. Your garret is the true
kingdom of the poet, neighbouring the stars; side-windows tether him to
earth, but a skylight looks to the heavens. (That is why so many poets
live in garrets, no doubt.) But it is the secrecy of a garret for him
and his books that a boy loves; there he is lord of his imagination;
there, when the impertinent world is hidden from his view, he rides with
great Turpin at night beneath the glimmer of the moon. What boy of sense
would read about Turpin in a mere respectable parlour? A hay-loft's the
thing, where you can hide in a dusty corner, and watch through a chink
the baffled minions of Bow Street, and hear Black Bess--good
jade!--stamping in her secret stall, and be ready to descend when a
friendly hostler cries, "Jericho!" But if there is no hay-loft at hand a
mere garret will do very well. And so John should have been in his
glory, as indeed for a while he was. But he showed his difference from
the right kind of a boy by becoming lonely. He had inherited from his
mother a silly kind of interest in silly books, but to him reading was a
painful process, and he could never remember the plot. What he liked
best (though he could not have told you about it) was a vivid physical
picture. When the puffing steam of Black Bess's nostrils cleared away
from the moonlit pool, and the white face of the dead man stared at
Turpin through the water, John saw it and shivered, staring big-eyed at
the staring horror. He was alive to it all; he heard the seep of the
water