all four-footed things; no, up a grassy slope had never been the way.  He came night after night, trying different ways; but he could not find the golden ladder, though all the time he knew that the Lair lay somewhere over there.  When he stood still and listened he could hear the friends of his youth at play, and they seemed to be calling:  “Are you coming, Corp?  Why does not Corp come back?” but he could never see them, and when he pressed forward their voices died away.  Then at last he said sadly to his boy:  “I shall never be able to show you the Lair, for I cannot find the way to it.”  And the boy was touched, and he said:  “Take my hand, father, and I will lead you to the Lair; I found the way long ago for myself.”

It took Tommy about two seconds to see all this, and perhaps another half-minute was spent in sad but satisfactory contemplation of it.  Then he felt that, for the best effect, Corp’s home life was too comfortable; so Gavinia ran away with a soldier.  He was now so sorry for Corp that the tear rolled down.  But at the same moment he saw how the effect could be still further heightened by doing away with his friend’s rude state of health, and he immediately jammed him between the buffers of two railway carriages, and gave him a wooden leg.  It was at this point that a lady who had kept her arms still too long rocked them frantically, then said, with cutting satire:  “Are you not feeling well, or have you hurt yourself?  You seem to be very lame.”  And Tommy woke with a start, to see that he was hobbling as if one of his legs were timber to the knee.

“It is nothing,” he said modestly.  “Something Corp said set me thinking; that is all.”

He had told the truth, and if what he imagined was twenty times more real to him than what was really there, how could Tommy help it?  Indignant Grizel, however, who kept such a grip of facts, would make no such excuse for him.

“Elspeth!” she called.

“There is no need to tell her,” said Tommy.  But Grizel was obdurate.

“Come here, Elspeth,” she cried vindictively.  “Something Corp said a moment ago has made your brother lame.”

Tommy was lame; that was all Elspeth and Corp heard or could think of as they ran back to him.  When did it happen?  Was he in great pain?  Had he fallen?  Oh, why had he not told Elspeth at once?

“It is nothing,” Tommy insisted, a little fiercely.

“He says so,” Grizel explained, “not to alarm us.  But he is suffering horribly.  Just before I called to you his face was all drawn up in pain.”

This made the sufferer wince.  “That was another twinge,” she said promptly.  “What is to be done, Elspeth?”

“I think I could carry him,” suggested Corp, with a forward movement that made Tommy stamp his foot—­the wooden one.

“I am all right,” he told them testily, and looking uneasily at Grizel.

“How brave of you to say so!” said she.