CHAPTER V.—ANOTHER SENTENCE OF DEATH.PERCY LANE HINTON had always been a great anxiety to his father and mother. The only child of the Reverend Henry and Mrs. Hinton, he had passed all his early boyhood in the little village of Good Roding in Essex, where his father was the Rector. He had been thoroughly spoilt and given in to in every way, so much so that with every year that passed, his father and mother had less authority over him.
By the time he was fourteen he had become so acutely wilful and disobedient that, although he could ill afford it, his father had taken him away from the day school in Chelmsford, seven miles away, and sent him to a boarding one in Ashford. The discipline there had certainly improved him, but as time went on his holidays became an even greater and greater tr
