There was an old and half-ruined house which stood on the extreme outskirts of the town and was surrounded by an old, dark, neglected wilderness of a garden. The two children had peeped in through the rusty iron gates occasionally, with their small faces pressed close between the bars, and had speculated upon what the garden contained and who lived in the house. Brian stoutly asserted that the house was empty, and then that it was haunted; he had probably heard his father or the servants say that. It remained, and had remained for some time, the one possible place which they had not explored; Brian would not have confessed it for the world, but he had a deadly fear of it, probably the only fear he knew concerning anything at that time. It frightened him, even while it fascinated him; he would choose that way to walk, even when it meant that to pass the house they would have to go a long way out of the direction they had arranged.
At last one day he came in, with his eyes curiously bright, and announced his intention of exploring the place. They would get in somehow, he said--through a window if necessary. Comethup was doubtful, but Brian's stronger will conquered, as usual, and they set off. Near the place, however, the elder boy hesitated, and drew back a little.
"I don't think we'll go," he said. "There won't be any fun in it." And he began to walk away.
Comethup felt relieved; he had not liked the expedition from the first. He said nothing, but set out to follow Brian.
But Brian chafed under a sense of degradation all day. He watched Comethup sharply, to be sure that the younger boy was not actually laughing at him; saw scorn in his eyes, when there was no scorn in Comethup's heart. They had parted for their midday meal, and had been out again in the afternoon, still under that sense of constraint, and Comethup was diligently studying the pictures in an old book alone in the parlour of his father's house, when Brian came leaping across the flower-beds and cried to him from outside the window:
"Come along; don't wait for anything. I'm going to that house."
Comethup knew perfectly well which house was meant, but he affected ignorance, and said weakly, "Which house?"
"Oh, you know; the haunted one; the one we didn't go to to-day. Come along."