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98 sickening sideways fall, and his head knocked against the wainscot.

"I had forgotten," he said slowly. "I shouldn't have thought any dream could have made me forget about my foot."

For he had indeed forgotten it, had leaped up, eagerly, confidently, as a sound child leaps, and the lame foot had betrayed him, thrown him down.

He crawled across to where the crutch lay—the old broom, cut down, that Lady Talbot had covered with black velvet for him.

"And now," he said, "I must get to Gravesend." He looked out of the window at the dismal, sordid street. "I wonder," he said, "if Deptford was ever really like it was in my dream—the gardens and the clean river and the fields?"

He got out of the house when no one was looking, and went off down the street.

"Clickety-clack" went the crutch on the dusty pavement. His back ached; his lame foot hurt; his "good" leg was tired and stiff, and his heart, too, was very tired. About this time, in the dream he had chosen to awaken from, for the sake of Beale, a bowl of porridge would be smoking at the end of a long oak table, and a great carved chair be set for a little boy who was not there.

Dickie strode on manfully, but the pain in his back made him feel sick.

"I don't know as I can do it," he said.