JASPAR TRISTRAM
CHAPTER I
It was late in the afternoon of a desolate and cold January
day when Jaspar Tristram arrived at Scarisbrick on his way to
Dr. Tower’s school as a new boy. The journey had been
long; at every stage that he had left behind his heart had
sunk more and more, and now, as the fly began heavily to
lumber off, he leant out of the window, still, if he might, to
keep the station to the last in view as the one remaining link
by which he could fancy himself yet bound to home. So
when at length it was hidden from his eyes by an envious
turn of the road, he drew in his head and flinging himself
back, burst into a passion of tears. Doubtless it was true
that what he was obliged to call his home was very far from
being happy; and true too that for weeks he had been looking
forward to this going for the first time to school as to an
entrance into a life in which those about him would not, as
at Telscombe Rectory, be for ever finding fault. Yet now
somehow the worst of home seemed as if it could not but be
better than the best of that unknown world towards which
he was thus irresistibly being forced. And then suddenly it
occurred to him—and at the thought he sat upright and alert
and looked out—that after all it was possible to escape. It
would be easily enough done: the horse now, as they mounted
a hill, was only walking, and it needed but to open the door
and slip out and he would be safe from pursuit amidst the
thick furze of the common that now spread as far as he could
see on either side of the way. But it was only for the briefest
