before him. Mechanically he turned to the column of Horses for Sale. That always interested him. He read, muttering the words half aloud:
FOR SALE—"SILKEN-MAID"—
Beautiful breedy-looking upstanding standard-bred trotting mare; her sire "Silk-Tassel" dam "Belle Roland"; age six years; sound: 15.3 hands; weight eleven hundred; good free active road mare; road all day twelve miles an hour; best feet and legs; well boned, level-headed, square-gaited trotter.
Good Lord, he did not know what he had been reading. . . . What was it all about? His eyes, raised stupidly from the paper, rested on the collection of butterflies that now stood on the mantelpiece. How the little chap had loved them! Derek had tried to teach him the names of the different species, and he had made sounds that were really good attempts, and had always leaned forward lovingly to pat the glass above that bright blue one from the Hartz Mountains, with his soft little palm. The little hands—the little hands!
Derek pushed back his chair and rose from the table. He went into the parlour. Mrs. Machin had lighted candles in the tall silver candelabrum there, to look "pretty"—not because she held with "any popish notions." The candles threw a seemly light over the little folded hands (he held one of Hobbs's daffodils) and over the little face—not startled and resentful now, but wearing a look of sweet composure.
Derek placed one hand on the foot of the coffin and the other on the head. Supported thus, he bent forward till his lips touched the lips of that darling child of his transgression. Sobs tore at his throat. "Buckskin, oh Buck, my little boy!"
