United States or Lesotho ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Already he was tearing at top speed towards the station. He dismissed the idea of a telegram. "Gabriel-Ernest is a werewolf" was a hopelessly inadequate effort at conveying the situation, and his aunt would think it was a code message to which he had omitted to give her the key. His one hope was that he might reach home before sundown.
The cab which he chartered at the other end of the railway journey bore him with what seemed exasperating slowness along the country roads, which were pink and mauve with the flush of the sinking sun. His aunt was putting away some unfinished jams and cake when he arrived. "Where is Gabriel-Ernest?" he almost screamed. "He is taking the little Toop child home," said his aunt.
"We must call him something till we know who he really is," she said. "Gabriel-Ernest, I think; those are nice suitable names." Van Cheele agreed, but he privately doubted whether they were being grafted on to a nice suitable child.
Van Cheele heard a shrill wail of fear, and stopped running. Nothing was ever seen again of the Toop child or Gabriel-Ernest, but the latter's discarded garments were found lying in the road so it was assumed that the child had fallen into the water, and that the boy had stripped and jumped in, in a vain endeavour to save it.
It was on her initiative that a memorial brass was put up in the parish church to "Gabriel-Ernest, an unknown boy, who bravely sacrificed his life for another." Van Cheele gave way to his aunt in most things, but he flatly refused to subscribe to the Gabriel-Ernest memorial. The little stone Saint occupied a retired niche in a side aisle of the old cathedral.
Word Of The Day