It was here that he wrote, being newly from school, at his father's dictation, or his father sometimes wrote himself, with pain and labour, the few notices or letters that were necessary.

So he went to this and sat down at it; he pondered a little; then he wrote a single line of abject regret.
"I ask your pardon and God's, sir, for the wicked words I said before I left the parlour.

R." He folded this and addressed it with the proper superscription; and left it lying there.
III It was a strange ride that he had back from Tansley next morning after mass.
Dick Sampson had met him with the horses in the stable-court at Matstead a little after four o'clock in the morning; and together they had ridden through the pitch darkness, each carrying a lantern fastened to his stirrup.

So complete was the darkness, however, and so small and confined the circle of light cast by the tossing light, that, for all they saw, they might have been riding round and round in a garden.

Now trees showed grim and towering for an instant, then gone again; now their eyes were upon the track, the pools, the rugged ground, the soaked meadow-grass; half a dozen times the river glimmered on their right, turbid and forbidding.