Published: United Services College Chronicle, Part i, 20 March 1882; Part ii, 3 June 1882.

Attribution: In bound volume of United Services College Chronicle at Haileybury College, his contributions identified by RK.

Text: United Services College Chronicle.

Notes: The story belongs to both the juvenilia and incomplete categories. RK edited the United Services College Chronicle, a school paper, from June 1881 to July 1882. It had been revived by the headmaster, Cormell Price, expressly so that RK could edit it. He made regular contributions to the paper throughout his tenure as editor and later sent contributions to it from India.

RK's only mention of this story is in a letter of 9 March 1882 in which he says that the Chronicle has gone to press and that ‘it will be a very large number this time and has the first portion of a serial in it’ (Letters, il, 17). The serial was never finished or at least never fully published, there being two parts only. It has been reprinted in Harbord, i, 520–3.

Portion of an unrolled MS. in a deserted study

A desolate stretch of gray sodden waste, with here and there a gorseclump in which stray rabbits, exiled from the Upper Cliffs, take refuge. A place barren and gloomy enough at its best, when the flags that fringe each drain-gully burst into ragged yellow stars; when the winds rest a little and dandelions flower aggressively from the blistered mud. In Autumn the rain comes with incessant down-pour to flood the rabbit- holes and soak the unkempt ponies. Every evening, white mists rise from the pools and float over plash and puddle like an army of wearied ghosts. In Winter the sea hammers and pounds persistently at the low embankment till a breach [“beach” in USCC] is made and the tide riots in, burdened with wrack and weed, to spread aimlessly over the face of the waste till the good folk of Daoul plaster up the embankment in Spring; for the Levels must be protected or the beasts will starve. Now, it was Christmas Eve, and in spite of dismal weather the narrow, crooked streets of Daoul were alive with merrymaking of all sorts.