Sabina had told Abel that he must keep away from the works, but he ignored her direction and often revolved about them at moments of liberty.  He was a past master in the art of scouting and evading danger, yet loved danger, and the Mill offered him daily possibilities of both courting and escaping peril.  Together with other little boys nourished on a penny journal, Abel had joined the ‘Band of the Red Hand.’  They did no harm, but hoped some day, when they grew older, to make a more’ painful impression on Bridetown.  At present their modest ambition was to leave the mark of their secret society in every unexpected spot possible.  On private walls, in church and chapel, or the house-places of the farms, it was their joy to write with chalk, ’The Red Hand has been here.’  Then followed a circle and a cross—­the dark symbol of the brotherhood.  Once a former chief of the gang had left his mark in the hackling shop and more than one member had similarly adorned the interior of the Mill; but the old chief had gone to sea at the age of thirteen, and, though younger than some of the present members, Abel was now appointed leader and always felt the demand to attempt things that should be worthy of so high a state.

They were not the everyday boys who thus combined, but a sort of child less common, yet not uncommon.  Such lads scent one another out by parity of taste and care less for gregarious games than isolated or lonely adventures.  They would rather go trespassing than play cricket; they would organise a secret raid before a public pastime.  Intuitively they desire romance, and feeling that law and order is opposed to romance, find the need to flout law and order in measure of their strength, and, of course, applaud the successful companion who does so with most complete results.

Now ’the old Adam’—­a comprehensive term for independence of view and unpreparedness to accept the tried values of pastors and masters—­was strong in Abel Dinnett.  He loved life, but hated discipline, and for him the Mill possessed far more significance than it could offer to any lesser member of the band, since his father owned it.  For that much Abel apprehended, though the meaning of paternity was as yet hidden from him.

That Raymond Ironsyde was his father he understood, and that he must hate him heartily he also understood:  his dead grandmother had poured this precept into his young mind at its most receptive period.  For the present he was still too youthful to rise beyond this general principle, and he was far too busy with his own adventures to find leisure to hate any one more than fitfully.  He told the Red Handers that some day he designed a terrific attack on Raymond Ironsyde; and they promised to assist and support him; but they all recognised their greater manifestations must be left until they attained more weight in the cosmic and social schemes, and, for the moment, their endeavour rose little higher than to set their fatal sign where least it might be expected.