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 then, with its usual preliminary whirr, the clock over the door struck five and, tired with having so long sat still, he stretched himself and, getting up, crossed over to the window. So, leaning his forehead against the woodwork of the frame which, scored and hatched over by many a knife, looked almost as if it had never been painted, dreamily he began to gaze out through the blurred panes into the yard. The round-backed cobble-stones with which it was paved were glistening with the wet, and with a hopeless and melancholy air the one forlorn tree that grew in the farther corner raised its leafless branches against the grey and streaming sky; from where he stood he could see down into the Doctor’s study on the farther side, all ruddy-warm with the glow of the huge fire that was roaring up the chimney. Nothing surely could be amiss in his life, who had so comfortable, so quiet, so cosy a room! To the right was the boundary-wall, the impassable barrier that stood between him and liberty; over the top of the wooden gates which, though still too high to climb, were yet a little lower than the wall itself, he caught a rapid glance of some tradesman’s cart rattling past, the driver bent nearly double in his effort to shelter himself from the rain which came furiously pelting in his face; in another moment even the sound of the wheels had died away, but in imagination he still followed the man to the home where presently he would be as safe from any molestation of his fellows as from that of the weather.

But suddenly he was called back to the realities of his prison-life by a shout from the door of:

‘Rosy!’

And involuntarily he gave a start as if to answer to the name. He stopped short, however, in time and merely went on looking out of window. With his eyes at any rate he was resolved he would still be free.

‘Rosy!’ cried again the boy at the door; and then still as he could get no answer:

‘Hi, Tristram!’ he shouted. ‘Do you hear?’