and that's why I'm here. Mind you, boy,” and the old man's fingers clutched him very tightly—“If you don't get the better of the Devil you'll be just like me one of these days. So'll he be, my son, one day. Just like me—and then it'll be your turn, my boy. Oh, they Westcotts! . . . Oh! my pains! Oh! my pains! . . . Oh! I'm a poor old man!—poor old man!”
His head sunk beneath the cushions again and his muttering died away like a kettle when the lid has been put on to it.
Peter had been kneeling so as to catch his grandfather's words. Now he drew himself up and with frowning brows faced the room. Had he but known it he was at that moment, exactly like his father.
He went slowly up to his attic.
His little book-case had gained in the last two years—there were now three of Henry Galleon's novels there. Bobby had given him one, “Henry Lessingham,” shining bravely in its red and gold; he had bought another, “The Downs,” second hand, and it was rather tattered and well thumbed. Another, “The Roads,” was a shilling paper copy. He had read these three again and again until he knew them by heart, almost word by word. He took down “Henry Lessingham” now and opened it at a page that was turned down. It is Book III, chapter VI, and there is this passage:
