The young man did not envelop himself in his spare skin of imperturbability at this crisis, because he felt that some show of active resentment was necessary to repel effusive admirers and maintain the barrier he had set up between himself and his fellow-travellers.  When Jim Done set foot on board the Francis Cadman he was flying from an intolerable life, seeking to escape from despair.  This he did not admit to himself, for he had the indomitable pride of a lonely man who gave to thought the time that should have been gloriously wasted on boon companions and young love.

Done was a sensitive man, who had been some thing of a pariah since his knickerbocker period, and was first the butt and later the bane of the narrow, convention-governed public of a small English village.  A fierce defiance of the people amongst whom he had lived his life kept him in his native place till after his twenty-first birthday.  He rebelled with all his soul against the animal unreason of these men, women, and children, puzzling over the fanatical stupidity of their prejudice, and, striving to beat it down, intensified it and kept it active long years after all might have been forgotten had he bowed meekly to ’the workings of Providence,’ as manifested in the thinkings and doings of the Godfearing people of Chisley.

When James Done was five years old the only murder that had been committed in Chisley district within the memory of the oldest inhabitant was done by a member of little Jim’s family.  The murderer was tried, found guilty, and sentenced accordingly.

The murder had a romantic plot and melodramatic tableaux, and was incorporated in the history of Chisley—­in fact, it was the history of Chisley.

The murderer passed out, but his family remained, and upon them fell the horror of his deed, the disgrace of his punishment.  They became creatures apart.  With all Chisley understood of the terror in those dread words, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ it invested the unhappy family, and they bowed as if to the will of God.

Jim’s mother, a thin, sensitive woman, with a patient face, put on a black veil, and was never afterwards seen abroad without it.  She helped her boy a few weary miles along the road of life, and then one evening went quietly to her room and died.  Jim’s sister, ten years older than himself, took up the struggle where the mother dropped it, and sustained it until the boy could go into the fields and earn a mean living for himself, at which point she drowned herself, leaving a quaint note in which she stated that life was too dreadful, but she hoped ’God and Jimmy would forgive her—­especially Jimmy.’

At this stage Chisley might have forgiven Jimmy, and condescended to forget, and even indulge itself in some sentimental compassion for the poor orphan, had the boy shown any disposition to accept these advances kindly and with proper gratitude; but for years Jim had been reasoning things out in a direct, childish way, and in his loneliness he was filled with an inveterate hatred.  He chose to live on as he had lived, accepting no concessions, disguising nothing, and Chisley quite conscientiously discovered in his sullen exclusiveness and his vicious dislike of worthy men the workings of homicidal blood, and accepted him as an enemy of society.