Miss Lydia Rufus was a prim person. Judging from her appearance one would have said that in her case virtue was compulsory through lack of opportunity. And yet she had had her “accident”--that was how she referred to it in conversations with her Maker. No one in Sandport, save herself and God, knew about it. It had happened ten years before Peter became her pupil. The “accident” had been born anonymously, as one might say, and had been brought up _incognito_. After the first unavoidable preliminaries for which her presence was indispensable, she and the “accident” had separated. She hardly ever dared to see it, for she was alone in the world and had her living to earn--to do that one must appear respectable. For a woman of such bristling righteousness to have been so yielding as to have had an “accident” was almost to her credit: it was in the nature of a _tour de force_, like sword-swallowing, passing a camel through the eye of a needle or any other form of occult acrobatics. It was a miracle in heart-magic. And often in the night her heart went out in longing for the child whom she dared not acknowledge. In her soul, which most people regarded as an ice-house, a sanctuary was established with an altar of mother-love, on which the candles of yearning were kept burning. This chapter in her secret history would never have been mentioned had she not made Peter the proxy of her “accident,” because he was ten and because he was handsome. It was lucky for Peter. Her usual attitude toward children was one of condemnation. She expiated her own sin by uprooting the old Adam from the hearts of her pupils. In her vigor and diligence she often uprooted flowers. For the rest, she was a High Church woman, wore elastic-sided boots and never permitted anything to be placed on a Bible. Her system of education was one of moral straight-jackets. Peter found himself in a cramped new house, in a raw new street, on the outskirts of a jerry-built town. The wind seemed always to be blowing and, in whichever direction he walked, he always came to sand. It was as though this place had been planted in a desert that escape might be impossible. Twenty other little boys, about his own age, were his fellow-captives. When the school was marched out, walking two abreast, with Miss Rufus sternly bringing up the tail of the procession, he would meet other crocodiles of boys and girls, sedately parading, followed by their warders. These public promenades were a part of the school's advertisement; deportment was strictly observed. Sandport, as Peter knew it, was a settlement for convict-children.