care of itself.' It was this thought that made him interested in his precise age. He had lived thirteen years. He was still a boy. But when he had lived as long again . . . that is to say, a quarter of the way through the twentieth century, he would be twentysix, the age at which Napoleon became famous as the conqueror of Italy... as long again, say, and he would be thirty-nine, middle-aged, nearly as old, perhaps, as Mr Macarthy himself. . . . And yet thirteen years from that, half way through the century he would be fifty-two, the age at which Shakespeare died ... on his fifty-second birthday, it was said. It was a queer notion to die on your birthday . perhaps thirty-nine years from now he, too, might be dying, like Shakespeare, on his fifty-second birthday. Anyhow, thirty-nine years was a good long time, almost forty years, three times as long as he had been living already, and it seemed to him as if he had been always alive . . . and yet he remembered the papers he used to sell with news in them that was stale before he was born. the news of the death of Sir David ByronQuinn, for example, killed in the Soudan, near a quarter of a century before Adam was born. And Sir David was the ..

...

It was a queer thing, surely, that Herr Behre, known to Miss Gannon, their common landlady, as 'That Frenchman' (which was ridiculous; for so far as he was anything, he was a German) should think that Adam resembled that grand, if rather naughty, baronet and adventurer, Sir David Byron-Quinn, while Adam himself found him uncannily like his godfather, Mr O'Toole. When Mr O'Toole was particularly pleased with the way the world treated him (which was seldom) he looked at you with eyes that were almost the same as Lady Daphne Page gave Sir David Byron-Quinn in her portrait of him at the National Gallery. He knew that portrait well; for he often went to the gallery now to look at it. Also he went there to look at what

was called a bird's-eye view of Dublin, painted by a man called Mahoney, from the spire of St George's Church, the very spire he saw through his window, in 1850 ... that was half a century before Adam was born. Yet he thought Dublin looked much the same then as now. Immediately in the foreground of the picture, you could see the line of houses, the backs of them, from Findlater's Church up Gardiner's Row and Great Denmark Street (with the new school building he had suffered so much in not yet there, thank God!) to Mountjoy Square, with the windows of the room that were now Mr Macarthy's but then belonged to some great man, a Lord Chancellor, was it? . . . The Lord Chancellor was the head of the Law. He knew now from Mr Macarthy that the Law was not necessarily always wrong. . . though, perhaps, more often wrong than right. Mr Macarthy's own father had been a great lawyer, though not a Lord Chancellor, nor a lord nor a chancellor of any kind. Was he what they called a judge? No, he thought he had not been a judge. To be a judge you had to pretend to be half an Englishman . . . and that was humbug. And Mr Macarthy's father hated humbug. So did Mr Macarthy. Adam was a little afraid of Mr Macarthy: he hated humbug so very bitterly. It would never do to tell the smallest lie to Mr Macarthy.

He had never told a lie to Father Innocent: but he wondered if he might not be tempted some day to tell one to Mr Macarthy queer feelings come over you when you are thirteen . . . and Mr Macarthy asked questions Father Innocent never asked

not that Mr Macarthy was what you could call inquisitive. Mr Macarthy was a gentleman, and gentlemen are not inquisitive. To be inquisitive, Mr Macarthy said, was to ask questions you had no right to ask. Adam felt he asked no question he was not right to ask . . . but sometimes they were hard questions for a boy going on thirteen to answer truly. . .

St George's bells rang six ... and an Angelus bell was ringing too. . . . Adam sidled to the floor, stretched his arms, and yawned . . . one of the questions Mr Macarthy had asked him was what he thought about when he lay in bed, wideawake, yet not up and doing.

To-day he was thirteen, he would no longer lie in bed when once awake: he would be up and doing .. then he would be less afraid of the temptation to tell a lie in answer to one of Mr Macarthy's questions.

There was also a jollier thought that called him out of bed: there was the thought of his birthday present . . . to signalise his entry upon his teens, Mr Macarthy and Herr Behre and Mr Turlough O'Meagher had subscribed together to buy him a bicycle.

The first present Mr Macarthy had provided him with was a large hip-bath, and, now that it was put before her as an economic proposition, Miss Gannon was willing to find for him as much hot water as he could use; so that ordinarily there was no self-denial called for by his ablutions. But he could not expect a bath full of hot water so early in the morning. Eight o'clock was the hour for his bath water, and hard enough it was to get him to take it then. But this morning everything was different . . . he was thirteen years old, going to be a man. A man he would be at once. . . . He emptied his jug into the bath, slipped out of his night shirt, splashed two handfuls over the long hair on his head, then stepped boldly in and sat down in it . . . rather wished he hadn't, but persevered.

Ten minutes past six found him wrapped in the bath towel, scrubbing himself into a glowing heat, and feeling infinitely great and good. At half past six he was fully dressed . . . still virtuous, he sat down to do a little Latin before breakfast .

by a

quarter to seven the Latin Grammar had given way to the Latin Dictionary. . . . By seven he was reading Keats, starting Endymion for the hundredth time

it is impossible to say at what moment he relinquished this; but, when Miss Gannon brought him his breakfast, she found the table littered with books and he himself comfortably drowsing between two bicycle catalogues.

'There, there,' said she, 'I thought, on your birthday, you might at least be trying to turn over a new leaf.'

'I have,' said Adam. 'I've been at work for hours.' 'Ah, go on!' said Miss Gannon, but she did not speak so crossly now as she was wont to do when Adam first came under her charge. She was merely disturbed to think where on earth she was to store Adam's bicycle, that the barrister of great antiquity, though still junior in standing, who resided on her first floor, might not break either it or himself by falling over it when intoxicated.

Since Adam had become Mr Macarthy's ward, and even before his thirteenth birthday, St George's Place, from Miss Gannon herself to St Kevin the cat, had revolved round Adam Macfadden.

Chapter Two

BUYING A BICYCLE

AT nine o'clock Adam left the house to seek his guardian, his chief guardian, Stephen Macarthy. Normally it was six minutes' walk from his house to Mr Macarthy's, but this morning he would have done it in four and three quarters had he not encountered Dr Hillingdon-Ryde mounting his own bicycle at the corner of Gardiner Street, and Adam stopped to see that very large man mount nimbly as a boy upon his proportionally large machine, and speed off down Gardiner's Place like a travelling pillar of the Church. He did not go, however, without throwing Adam a cheery 'Good day,' in the voice of one interested in him individually, apart from his general benevolence towards the world.

Adam always felt that Dr Hillingdon-Ryde was a man he would like to know, ever since the day he had given him sixpence and a caution not to sell him old newspapers outside the Gresham Hotel. To-day he remembered how he had been wont to pray for the conversion of the good Doctor from the tenets associated with Geneva, or rather Findlater's Church, to those associated with Father Innocent. He smiled at that recollection now; smiled, too, to remember how Father Innocent had cautioned him not to touch his cap to him in any way that implied recognition of his sacerdotal pretensions: he had had difficulty in distinguishing between the kindly gentleman and the perverse Presbyter: he was cheered to reflect that anyhow he had never offended that early friend.