Page 473 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

assembled, had done their best to create a Kingdom of Hell.
After the farce had been played again, and the children
had stood up and sat down, and sung a hymn, and told how
many twice five were, and repeated their belief in ‘One God
the Father Almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth’, the party
reviewed the workshops, and saw the church, and went ev-
erywhere but into the room where the body of Peter Brown,
aged twelve, lay starkly on its wooden bench, staring at the
gaol roof which was between it and Heaven.
Just outside this room, Sylvia met with a little adventure.
Meekin had stopped behind, and Burgess, being suddenly
summoned for some official duty, Frere had gone with him,
leaving his wife to rest on a bench that, placed at the sum-
mit of the cliff, overlooked the sea. While resting thus, she
became aware of another presence, and, turning her head,
beheld a small boy, with his cap in one hand and a hammer
in the other. The appearance of the little creature, clad in a
uniform of grey cloth that was too large for him, and hold-
ing in his withered little hand a hammer that was too heavy
for him, had something pathetic about it.
‘What is it, you mite?’ asked Sylvia.
‘We thought you might have seen him, mum,’ said the
little figure, opening its blue eyes with wonder at the kind-
ness of the tone. ‘Him! Whom?’
‘Cranky Brown, mum,’ returned the child; ‘him as did
it this morning. Me and Billy knowed him, mum; he was a
mate of ours, and we wanted to know if he looked happy.’
‘What do you mean, child?’ said she, with a strange ter-
ror at her heart; and then, filled with pity at the aspect of

For the Term of His Natural Life