Was it imagined or was there indeed a triumph there--a triumph
that no age nor weakness could obscure?
And from the induction of that first terrible evening Peter stepped into a
blind terror that gave the promised deliverance of that approaching Easter
Wednesday an air of blind necessity. Also about the house the dust and
neglect crept and increased as though it had been, in its menace and evil
omen, a veritable beast of prey. Doors were off their hinges, windows
screamed to their clanging shutters, the grime lay, like sand, about the
sills and corners of the rooms. At night the house was astir with sound but
with no human voices.
II
But it was only at night that Terror crept from its cupboard and leapt
on to Peter's shoulders. He defied it even then with set lips and the
beginning of a conception of the duties that Courage demands of its
worshippers. He would fight it, let it develop as it would--but, during
these weeks, in the sunlight, he thought nothing of it at all, but only
with eager eyes watched his father.
His reading had, in these latter years, been slender enough. It was seldom
that he had any money, there was no circulating library in Treliss at that
time and he knew no one who could lend him books. He fell back, perforce,
on the few that he had and especially on the three "Henry Galleons." But
he had in his head--and he had known it without putting it into words,
for a very long time--"The Thousand and One Nights of Peter Westcott,
Esq.
Pages:
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185