“When your father has been bringing you down here, or at any time when you have been out amongst other people, have you ever overheard them saying, ‘Poor chap! it’s a sad thing,’ and things of that kind, as if they were sorry for you?”

Cripple Charlie’s face flushed scarlet, and my own cheeks burned, as I looked daggers at the school-master, for what seemed a brutal insensibility to the lame boy’s feelings.  He did not condescend, however, to meet my eyes.  His own were still fixed steadily on Charlie’s, and he went on.

“I’ve heard it. My ears are quick, and for many a Sunday after I came I caught the whispers behind me as I went up the aisle, ‘Poor man!’ ‘Poor gentleman!’ ‘He looks bad, too!’ One morning an old woman, in a big black bonnet, said, ‘Poor soul!’ so close to me, that I looked down, and met her withered eyes, full of tears—­for me!—­and I said, ‘Thank you, mother,’ and she fingered the sleeve of my coat with her trembling hand (the veins were standing out on it like ropes), and said, ‘I’ve knowed trouble myself, my dear.  The Lord bless yours to you!’”

“It must have been Betty Johnson,” I interpolated; but the school-master did not even look at me.

“You and I,” he said, bending nearer to Cripple Charlie, “have had our share of this life’s pain so dealt out to us that any one can see and pity us.  My boy, take a fellow-sufferer’s word for it, it is wise and good not to shrink from the seeing and pitying.  The weight of the cross spreads itself and becomes lighter if one learns to suffer with others as well as with oneself, to take pity and to give it.  And as one learns to be pained with the pains of others, one learns to be happy in their happiness and comforted by their sympathy, and then no man’s life can be quite empty of pleasure.  I don’t know if my troubles have been lighter or heavier ones than yours——­”

The school-master stopped short, and turned his head so that his face was almost hidden against his hand upon the wall.  Charlie’s big eyes were full of tears, and I am sure I distinctly felt my ears poke forwards on my head with anxious curiosity to catch what Mr. Wood would tell us about that dreadful time of which he had never spoken.

“When I was your age,” he said bluntly, “I was unusually lithe and active and strong for mine.  When I was half as old again, I was stronger than any man I knew, and had many a boyish triumph out of my strength, because I was slender and graceful, and this concealed my powers.  I had all the energies and ambitions natural to unusual vigour and manly skill.  I wanted to be a soldier, but it was not to be, and I spent my youth at a desk in a house of business.  I adapted myself, but none the less I chafed whenever I heard of manly exploits, and of the delights and dangers that came of seeing the world.  I used to think I could bear anything to cross the seas and see foreign climes.  I did cross the Atlantic at last—­a convict in