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The Dark House, by I. A. R. Wylie
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Title: The Dark House
Author: I. A. R. Wylie
Release Date: September 27, 2004 [eBook #13546]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DARK HOUSE***
E-text prepared by Al Haines
THE DARK HOUSE
by
I. A. R. WYLIE
Author of "The Daughter of Brahma," "The Shining Heights," etc.
1922
PART I
I
1
The cigar was a large one and Robert Stonehouse was small. At the precise moment, in fact, when he leant out of the upstairs bedroom window, instinctively seeking fresh air, he became eight years old. He did not know this, though he did know that it was his birthday and that a birthday was a great and presumably auspicious occasion. His conception of what a birthday ought to be was based primarily on one particular event when he had danced on his mother's bed, shouting, "I'm five--I'm five!" in unreasonable triumph. His mother had greeted him gravely, one might say respectfully, and his father, who when he did anything at all did it in style, had given him a toy fort fully garrisoned with resplendent Highland soldiers. And there had been a party of children whom, as a single child, he disliked and despi