CHAPTER IV.

Richard Marwood likes his pipe.

Daredevil Dick hears the alarm at five o'clock and leaves his couch very cautiously.

He would like, before he leaves the house, to go to his mother's door, if it were only

to breathe a prayer upon the threshold.

He would like to go to his uncle's bedside, to give one farewell look at the kind face.

But he is promised to be very cautious and to awaken no one.

So he steals quietly out through the drawing room window, the same window by which he entered

so strangely, the preceding evening, into the chill morning, dark his night yet.

He pauses in the little garden walk for a minute while he lights his pipe, and looks up at

the shrouded windows of the familiar house.

God bless her, he mutters, and God reward that good old man, forgiving a scamp like me,

the chance of redeeming his honor.

There is a thick fog but no rain.

Daredevil Dick knows his way so well that neither fog nor darkness are any hindrance to him,

any treaches on with a cheery step and his pipe in his mouth towards the Slapperton railway

station.

The station is half an hour's walk out of the town, and when he reaches it, the clocks

are striking six.

It is a timing that the train will not start for half an hour.

He walks up and down the platform, looking with his hands in face and shabby dress, rather

conspicuous.

...