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                             NEVERMORE

                        BY ROLF BOLDREWOOD

AUTHOR OF 'ROBBERY UNDER ARMS,' 'THE SQUATTER'S DREAM,' 'THE MINER'S
RIGHT,' ETC.

    London
    MACMILLAN AND CO.
    AND NEW YORK
    1892

    _All rights reserved_

    _First Edition 1892
    Second Edition July and December 1892_




CHAPTER I


'Then, by Heaven! I'll leave the country. I won't stop here to be
bullied for doing what scores of other fellows have done and nothing
thought about it. It's unjust, it's intolerable--'

Thus spoke impetuous Youth.

'I should say something would depend upon the family tradition of the
"other fellows" to whom you refer. In ours gambling debts and shady
transactions with turf-robbers happen to be forbidden luxuries.'

Thus spoke philosophic Age, calm, cynical, unsparing.

No power of divination was needed to decide that the speakers were
father and son; no prophet to discover, on one side, sullen defiance
following a course of reckless folly; on the other, wounded family pride
and long-nursed consuming wrath.

As the rebellious son stood up and faced his sire, it was curious to
mark the similarity of the inherited lineaments brought out more clearly
in his moments of rage and defiance.

Both men were strong and sinewy, dark in complexion, and bearing the
ineffaceable impress of gentle nurture, leisure, and assured position.
The younger man was the taller, and of a frame which, when fully
developed, promised unusual strength and activity. More often than the
converse, does it obtain that the son, in outward appearance or mental
constitution, reproduces his mother's attributes