consequence, being under disadvantages which
required them to be a sort of heroes if they were to work themselves up to an
equal standing with their legally born brothers. But he had never brought such
knowledge into any association with his own lot, which had been too easy for him
ever to think about it - until this moment when there had darted into his mind
with the magic of quick comparison, the possibility that here was the secret of
his own birth, and that the man whom he called uncle was really his father. Some
children, even younger than Daniel, have known the first arrival of care, like
an ominous irremovable guest in their tender lives, on the discovery that their
parents, whom they had imagined able to buy everything, were poor and in hard
money troubles. Daniel felt the presence of a new guest who seemed to come with
an enigmatic veiled face, and to carry dimly-conjectured, dreaded revelations.
The ardour which he had given to the imaginary world in his books suddenly
rushed towards his own history and spent its pictorial energy there, explaining
what he knew, representing the unknown. The uncle whom he loved very dearly took
the aspect of a father who held secrets about him - who had done him a wrong -
yes, a wrong: and what had become of his mother, from whom he must have been
taken away? - Secrets about which he, Daniel, could never inquire; for to speak
or be spoken to about these new thoughts seemed like falling flakes of fire to
his imagination. Those who have known an impassioned childhood will understand
this dread of utterance about any shame connected with their parents. The
impetuous advent of new images took possession of him with the force of fact for
the first time told, and left him no immediate power for the reflection that he
might be trembling at a fiction of his own. The terrible sense of collision
between a strong rush of feeling and the dread of its betrayal, found relief at
length in big slow tears, which fell without restraint until the voice of Mr.
Fraser was heard saying -
    »Daniel, do you see that you are sitting on the bent pages of your book?«
    Daniel immediately moved the book without turning round, and after holding
it before him for an instant, rose with it and walked away into the open
grounds, where he could dry his tears unobserved. The first shock of suggestion
past, he could remember that he had no certainty how things really had been, and
that he had been making conjectures about his own history, as he had often made
stories about Pericles or Columbus