100 MASTER SKYLARK

fallen, and its massive tower, black with age and smoke,
staring on the town. But he was too confused to know
whither they went or what he saw in passing; for of such
a forest of houses he had never even dreamed, with people
swarming everywhere like ants upon a hill, and among
them all not one kind face he knew.. Through the spirit
of adventure that had roused him for a time welled up a
great heart-sickness for his mother and his home.

Out of a bewildered daze he came at last to realize this
much: that the master-player’s house was very tall and
very dark, standing in a dismal, dirty street, and that it
had a gloomy hallway full of shadows that crept and
wavered along the wall in the dim light of the late after-
noon.

Then the master-player pushed him up a narrow stair-
ease and along a black corridor to a door at the end of the
passage, through which he thrust him into a darkness like
night, and slammed the door behind him.

Nick heard the bolts shoot heavily, and Master Carew
eall through the heavy panels: “Now, Jackanapes, sit
down and chew the cud of solitude awhile. It may cool
thy silly pate for thee, since nothing else will serve. When
thou hast found thy common sense, perchance thou ‘It find
thy freedom, not before.” Then his step went down the
corridor, down the stair, through the long hall—a door
banged with a hollow sound that echoed through the
house, and all was still.

At first, in the utter darkness, Nick could not see at all,
and did not move for fear of falling down some awful