Her daughter had not then attained her
twelfth birthday.

Just a year afterwards, almost to a day,
my father got a bad full while hunting, his
spine sustaining such severe injury that he
only lived long enougli to appoint my uncle
our guardian and to take his leave of us,
with many words of affection and regret
that he had not proved a more prudent—
he could not have been a kinder—parent.
His affairs were so embarrassed that another
six months must have produced bankruptcy.
He had mortgaged the estate—in itself much
deteriorated in value—to the fullest extent;
and, in short, when all his debts were paid,
nothing remained to us but our mother's
legacy, of which we should come into possession
at the ages of one-and-twenty. I was
then ten—Jack thirteen. We went home
with our uncle to the great, grim, cold house
in the dull country town.

Katy was sorry on our account, glad on her
own, for since her mother's death her life had
been very monotonous. I don't think my uncle
was harsh to her, though he never showed
much kindness or consideration towards
anybody. Yet, child as she was, she had
contrived to obtain some slight influence over
him. I fancy he might have loved her if she
had been his own daughter. But whatever
expectations of company and immature
coquetries our arrival excited in Katy's
bosom, were doomed to disappointment at
that time, for our uncle soon announced his
intention of sending us to boarding-school.
Our ignorance justified him in this, if his
dislike did not. I say his dislike, for I knew
he always hated us, and, from that day he
became our guardian, had promised himself
the gratification of subduing us, breaking us
into his humours, and, as he once said,
flogging the rebellious devil out of us. How he
succeeded in this will be seen.

Hitherto we had had, literally, no education.
For when our father sent us to school,
as he did once, upon the first attempt at the
infliction of punishment we had made a fight
for it, subsequently escaping and returning
home to be half-laughed at, half-commended
—not ordered back. But, now, there was no
disputing the will of my uncle, even if we
had been inclined to attempt it. To boarding-
school we went accordingly.

Yorkshire schools have of late years
obtained a most unenviable notoriety. In my
day all schooling was conducted, on severer
principles than the more fortunate youth of
this generation have any idea of. Punishment
by blows and starvation formed an
ordinary part of it. I do not know that the
school selected by my uncle had a savager
master or a crueller discipline than many
others, but I am sure that a more direct
method for the perversion of every honest
and manly quality could not have been
devised than the grinding tyranny which,
under the name of an education, we endured
for two years. Strong boys it transformed
into bullies; weak boys, into cowards and
liars.

We experienced enough of it and to spare.
I am not going into detail, suffice it to say,
that we were not conquered easily. One
thing our school discipline taught us, to
bear—perhaps to inflict—pain.

We never went home for the holidays, or
saw our uncle's face, vintil the expiration of
two years. He paid the schoolmaster's bills
regularly and received reports of us from
him. Then word came for us to return. We
had had all the schooling considered necessary.
All we were destined to have, as it
proved.

Katy was more beautiful, and more
conscious of it, than ever, when we saw her
again. Often as we had talked of her—Jack
was especially prone to this, and once tried
his hand at a schoolboy letter to her, which
the schoolmaster confiscated, flogging him for
writing it—we had never pictured to
ourselves such loveliness as two years had
developed in her whom we always regarded as
our cousin.

I am not good at description, or I would
attempt to convey some idea of Katy's face.
Though I don't think words could do it. I
see it in my dreams sometimes—dreams that
it is dreadful to wake from—but, shall
never meet its similitude again, unless in
Heaven.

The struggle between us and our uncle
commenced immediately. He never made
any pretence of liking us, always addressing
us rather as dogs than human beings. I
think the spirit with which we met and
resented this presented some sort of infernal
fascination to him. The day after our return,
enraged at a defiant answer of Jack's, he
took a horse-whip, and in spite of a furious
resistance, flogged him mercilessly. My turn
came soon enough, and after that it was all
oaths, curses and blows on one side, and
desperate but ineffectual struggles on the other.
We should not have remained in the house
three days, but for one reason—Katy. We
were both in love with her.

You may smile at the idea of the passions
entertained by boys of twelve and fifteen
for a girl of thirteen. But I am sure that
nothing I have since experienced was more
real or all-engrossing. The trivial incidents
connected with it remain indelibly impressed
upon my memory, while thousands of more
important events which have transpired since
are forgotten. I recollect the colour of
ribbons in her hair, the look and scent of
flowers she wore, the precise aspect of the
rooms in which she sat and worked or
moved about, even in the minutest detail.
Sometimes this retrospection is misery to
me.

I loved her with my whole boyish soul.
The sound of her girlish voice, the very rustle
of her dress, affected me with a delicious