Page:Her Benny - Silas K Hocking (Warne, 1890).djvu/190

166 But one short hour before the world had never seemed so bright, and he had thought how he should enjoy the beautiful summer evening in Wavertree Park; now the world had never seemed so cheerless and dark, and his evening was to be spent in a prison cell.

Poor boy! it is no wonder that he wished he might die, for every hope had been blasted in an hour.

On arriving at the police station he was thrust into his cell without a word. He was thankful to find that it was empty, for he wanted to be alone with his thoughts. Selecting the darkest comer, he crouched down upon the floor and rested his head upon his knees. He could not weep, his grief was too great for tears. He could only think and think, until his thoughts seemed to scorch his very brain. And as he crouched thus, while the hours of that summer's afternoon and evening dragged slowly along, his whole life passed vividly before him, he seemed to live it all over again, and he asked himself if he could go back to the old life of hunger and cold in the streets.

When Nelly was with him, and they knew no other life, they were not unhappy. But he had had a glimpse of Paradise since then. He had tasted the joys of hope and had cherished dreams of a happy future, and he felt that it would be easier to die than to return in disgrace to what he had thought he had left behind him for ever.

It was very hard that just as the world seemed brightest, and hope seemed growing into certainty—just as the path of life was getting clear, and the end seemed certain, that