His relationship with the Brothers Banditti across the hill was peculiar.  It was one of Dr. Stonehouse’s many theories of life that children should be independent, untrammelled alike by parental restrictions and education, and except on the very frequent occasions when this particular theory collided with his comfort and his conviction that his son was being disgracefully neglected, Robert lived the life of a lonely and illiterate guttersnipe.  He did not know he was lonely.  He did not want to play with the other children in the Terrace.  But he did know that for some mysterious reason or other they did not want to play with him.  The trim nursemaids drew their starched and shining darlings to one side when he passed, and he in turn scowled at them with a fierce contempt to which, all unknown, was added two drops of shame and bitterness.  But even among the real guttersnipes of the neighbourhood he was an outcast.  He did not know how to play with other children.  He was ignorant alike of their ways and their games, and, stiff with an agonizing shyness, he bore himself before them arrogantly.  It was natural that they in turn hated him.  Like young wolves they flaired a member of a strange and alien pack—­a creature who broke their unwritten laws—­and at first they had hunted him pitilessly, throwing mud and stones at him, pushing him from the pavement, jeering at him.  But they had not reckoned with the Stonehouse rages.  He had flung himself on them.  He had fought them singly, by twos and threes—­the whole pack.  In single combat he had thrashed the grocer’s boy who was several inches taller and two years older than himself.  But even against a dozen his white-hot fury, which ignored alike pain and discretion, made him dangerous and utterly unbeatable.  From all encounters he had come out battered, blood-stained, literally in shreds, but clothed in lonely victory.

Now they only jeered at him from a safe distance.  They made cruel and biting references to the Stonehouse menage, flying with mock shrieks of terror when he was unwise enough to attempt pursuit.  Usually he went his way, his head up, swallowing his tears.

But the Brothers Banditti belonged to him.

On the other side of the hill was a large waste plot of ground.  A builder with more enterprise than capital had begun the erection of up-to-date villas but had gone bankrupt in the process, and now nothing remained of his ambition but a heap of somewhat squalid ruins.  Here, after school hours, the Brothers met and played and plotted.

They had not always been Banditti.  Before Robert’s advent they had been the nice children of the nicest people of the neighbourhood.  Their games had been harmless, if apathetic, and they had always gone home punctually and clean.  The parents considered the waste land as a great blessing.  Robert had come upon them in the course of his lonely prowlings, and from a distance had watched them play hide and