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CHAPTER I

was late in the afternoon of a desolate and cold January day when Jaspar Tristram arrived at Scarisbrick on his way to Dr. Tower’s school as a new boy. The journey had been long; at every stage that he had left behind his heart had sunk more and more, and now, as the fly began heavily to lumber off, he leant out of the window, still, if he might, to keep the station to the last in view as the one remaining link by which he could fancy himself yet bound to home. So when at length it was hidden from his eyes by an envious turn of the road, he drew in his head and flinging himself back, burst into a passion of tears. Doubtless it was true that what he was obliged to call his home was very far from being happy; and true too that for weeks he had been looking forward to this going for the first time to school as to an entrance into a life in which those about him would not, as at Telscombe Rectory, be for ever finding fault. Yet now somehow the worst of home seemed as if it could not but be better than the best of that unknown world towards which he was thus irresistibly being forced. And then suddenly it occurred to him—and at the thought he sat upright and alert and looked out—that after all it was possible to escape. It would be easily enough done: the horse now, as they mounted a hill, was only walking, and it needed but to open the door and slip out and he would be safe from pursuit amidst the thick furze of the common that now spread as far as he could see on either side of the way. But it was only for the briefest