He ran home with the image of the child in his mind—on his brain.
Sarah—plain Sarah—met him at the top of the stairs. He brushed past her.
"La! but ye does look glum," said Sarah.
Archie locked his door. He did not want to see even Sarah—homely Sarah—that night.
CHAPTER III.
"SOMETHING IN SOAP."
It was a still, sultry night in November. Archie's balcony window was wide open, and if there had been a breath of air anywhere he would have had the benefit of it. That was one advantage of having a room high up above the town, and there were several others. For instance, it was quieter, more retired, and his companions did not often take him by storm, because they objected to climb so many stairs. Dingy, small, and dismal some might have called it, but Archie always felt at home up in his semi-attic. It even reminded him of his room in the dear old tower at Burley. Then his morsel of balcony, why that was worth all the money he paid for the room itself; and as for the view from this charming, though non-aristocratic elevation, it was simply unsurpassed, unsurpassable—looking far away over a rich and fertile country to the grand old hills beyond—a landscape that, like the sea, was still the same, but ever changing; sometimes smiling and green, sometimes bathed in tints of purple and blue, sometimes grey as a sky o'ercast with rain clouds. Yes, he loved it, and he would take a chair out here on a moonlight evening and sit and think and dream.
But on this particular night sleep, usually so kind to the young man, absolutely refused to visit his pillow. He tried to woo the goddess on his right side, on his left, on his back; it was all in vain. Finally, he sat bolt upright in his little truckle bed in silent defiance.
"I don't care," he said aloud, "whether I sleep or not. What does it matter? I've nothing to do to-morrow. Heigho!"
Nothing to do to-morrow! How sad! And he so young too. Were all his dreams of future fortune to fade and pass away like this—nothing to do? Why he envied the very boys who drove the mill wagons that went lazily rolling past his place every day. They seemed happy, and so contented; while he—why his very life—had come to be all one continued fever.