playing. I noticed, as my mother went downstairs, that she kept her head turned away from the window.
Presently we heard unaccustomed sounds in the hall. The tramping and scraping of heavy feet. We looked over the banisters and saw a man being carried in by Kleiner Klaus and our gardener. The man's clothes were wet, so were his face and hair. It was Colonel Dover, staring with fixed, reproachful eyes at the lady of Duncombe House. And my mother, with a look I had never seen on her face, stood holding open the drawing-room door for the bearers to pass.
Their feet left muddy marks in the hall. . . .
We did not go downstairs till late that afternoon, when the body had been taken away.
People said the steel ferule of the umbrella had attracted the electric current.
I knew God had heard my prayer.
But in striking down my enemy he had struck the chestnut-tree. It was riven from foot to crotch.
That was the day I had in mind when I excused my laboured playing: "You expect me to be as quick as God."
