But how could her dear Dammy be a coward—­the vilest thing on earth!  He who was willing to fight anyone, ride anything, go anywhere, act anyhow.  Dammy the boxer, fencer, rider, swimmer.  Absurd!  Think of the day “the Cads” had tried to steal their boat from them when they were sailing it on the pond at Revelmead.  There had been five of them, two big and three medium.  Dam had closed the eye of one of them, cut the lip of another, and knocked one of the smaller three weeping into the dust.

They had soon cleared off and flung stones until Dam had started running for them and then they had fled altogether.

Think of the time when she set fire to the curtains.  Why, he feared no bull, no dog, no tramp in England.

A coward!  Piffle.

And yet he had screamed and kicked and cried—­yes cried—­as he had shouted that it was under his foot and moving out.  Rum! Very rum!

On the day that Dam left Monksmead for school Lucille wept till she could weep no more.  Life for the next few years was one of intermittent streaks of delirious joy and gloomy grief, vacation time when he was at Monksmead and term time when he was at school.  All the rest of the world weighed as a grain of dust against her hero, Dam.

CHAPTER VI.

THE SNAKE’S “MYRMIDON”.

For a couple of years and more, in the lower School at Wellingborough, Damocles de Warrenne, like certain States, was happy in that he had no history.  In games rather above the average, and in lessons rather below it, he was very popular among his fellow “squeakers” for his good temper, modesty, generous disposition, and prowess at football and cricket.

Then, later, dawned the day when from this comfortable high estate a common adder, preserved in spirits of wine, was the cause of his downfall and Bully Harberth the means of his reinstatement....

One afternoon Mr. Steynker, the Science Master, for some reason and without preliminary mention of his intent, produced a bottled specimen of a snake.  He entered the room with the thing under his arm and partly concealed by the sleeve of his gown.  Watching him as he approached the master’s desk and spoke with Mr. Colfe, the form-master, Dam noted that he had what appeared to be a long oblong glass box of which the side turned towards him was white and opaque.

When Mr. Steynker stepped on to the dais, as Mr. Colfe took up his books and departed, he placed the thing on the desk with the other side to the class....

And there before Dam’s starting, staring eyes, fastened to the white back of the tall glass box, and immersed in colourless liquid was the Terror.

He rose, gibbering, to his feet, pale as the dead, and pointed, mopping and mowing like an idiot.

How should a glass box restrain the Fiend that had made his life a Hell upon earth?  What did Steynker and Colfe and these others—­all gaping at him open-mouthed—­know of the Devil with whom he had wrestled deep beneath the Pit itself for ten thousand centuries of horror—­centuries whose every moment was an aeon?