The house was full of company, and the boy would, sometimes, have
yielded to the Fear that was never far away, had it not been for some
one whom he had known from the very beginning of everything, some one
who was as real as his mother, some one who was more powerful than
anything or any one in the house, and kinder, far, far kinder.
Often when Mrs. Slater would wonder of what her son was thinking as he
sat twisting string round and round in front of the fire, he would be
aware of his Friend in the shadow of the light, watching gravely, in the
cheerful room, having beneath his hands all the powers, good and evil,
of the house. Just as Henry pictured quite clearly to himself other
occupants of the house--some one with taloned claws behind the piano,
another with black-hooded eyes and a peaked cap in the shadows of an
upstairs passage, another brown, shrivelled and naked, who dwelt in a
cupboard in one of the empty bedrooms so, too, he could see his Friend,
vast and shadowy, with a flowing beard and eyes that were kind and
shining.
Often he had felt the pressure of his hand, had heard his reassuring
whisper in his ears, had known the touch of his lips upon his forehead.
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