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THE SINS OF THE CHILDREN


    [Illustration: And over them both... hung the moon and stars.]




    THE SINS OF THE CHILDREN

    _A NOVEL_

    BY
    COSMO HAMILTON


    WITH FRONTISPIECE BY
    GEORGE O. BAKER

    [Illustration]

    BOSTON
    LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
    1916


    _Copyright, 1916_,
    BY COSMO HAMILTON.

    _All rights reserved_


    Published, October, 1916


    THE COLONIAL PRESS
    C. H. SIMONDS CO., BOSTON, U. S. A.


    To

    MY WIFE




    CONTENTS


    PART ONE--YOUTH

    PART TWO--THE CITY

    PART THREE--LIFE




PART ONE

YOUTH


THE SINS OF THE CHILDREN


I

When Peter Guthrie laughed the rooks stirred on the old trees behind the
Bodleian and the bored cab-drivers who lolled in uncomfortable attitudes
on their cabs in St. Giles perked up their heads.

He threw open his door one morning and leaving one of these laughs of
his rolling round the quad of St. John's College found the recumbent
form of Nicholas Kenyon all among his cushions as usual, and as usual
smoking his cigarettes and reading his magazines. The words "as usual"
seemed to be stamped on his forehead.

"What d'you think?" cried Peter, filling the room like a thirty-mile
gale.

"You ought to know that I don't think. It's a form of exercise that I
never indulge in." Kenyon lit a fresh cigarette from the one which he
had half-smoked and with peculiar expertness flicked the end out of the
window into St. Giles Street, which ran past the great gates of the
college. He hoped that it might have fallen on somebody's head, but he
didn't get up to see.

"Well," said Peter, "I was coming down the High just now and an awful
pretty girl passed with a Univ. man. She looked at me--thereby very
nearly laying me flat on my face--and I heard her ask, 'Who's that?' It
was the man's answer that makes me laugh. He said: 'Oh, he's only a
Rhodes scholar!'" And off he went again.

Nicholas Kenyon raised his immaculate person a few inches and looked
round at his friend. The Harvard man, with his six-foot-one of excellent
muscles and sinews, his square shoulders and deep chest, and his fine,
honest, alert and healthy face, made most people ask who he was. "If I'd
been you," said Kenyon, "I should have made a mental note of that Univ.
blighter in order to land him one the next time you saw him, that he
wouldn't easily forget."

"Why