It was in this fashion that the boy entered upon a new and curious phase of his existence. In the hours that intervened between the moment of his entrance into that strange place and seven o’clock that evening, when he was at liberty to return to the great world out of doors, and thereby to his father in the little room, he walked on air and moved in a dream. Even when he had resigned his hat and overcoat and gloves, and had been shown where to place them; even when he had climbed a high stool in the mercifully secluded left-hand corner of that dreadfully public place at the side of the wizened boy, whose name was Mr. James Dodson, who henceforward was to be his mentor in many things, even then he could not realize what had happened to him. He could not realize that his prayers had been answered; that in sober truth he had become a conqueror. For the remainder of that strange, terrible, yet entrancing day he was not an apt pupil, but he did his best. His thoughts were merged in a devout sense of wonder at finding himself there. Many and surprising were his vagaries on this first day in those interminable hours which kept him from the little room. They filled his mentor with pain, incredulity, and protest. “We do find ’em, we do!” Mr. Dodson communicated in his second or unofficial manner to one of his fellow-labourers in the vineyard before the end of the day. “That d----d fool, Octavius, must be up the pole. This kid has got about as much savvy as a bottle-nosed hornet.” When at last came the hour of his release the boy returned in a state of great exaltation to his father in the little room. A week ago it had seemed impossible that he would ever be able to obtain pieces of silver by the work of his hands, but now that miracle was come to pass. However, the glamour of achievement passed all too soon. Disillusionment began on the morning of the following day. It was then that the full measure of nervous bewilderment at all the strange things about him descended upon him; it was then that the sense of his natural impotence was communicated to him first. It called for all his fortitude to sustain that long term between eight o’clock in the morning and seven o’clock at night. The minutes passed so tardily that it seemed they would never admit of his release. Long before the end of the day it was as much as he could do to refrain from running away from it all in the horror of sheer nausea. He longed to flee anywhere--anywhere so long as he could escape from this strange servitude to which he had committed himself.