Q.Read this sentence: M. Hamel had said that he would question us on participles. In the sentence above, the verb form “had said” in the first part is used to indicate an “earlier past”. The whole story is narrated in the past. M. Hamel's “saying” happened earlier than the events in this story. This form of the verb is called the past perfect. Pick out five sentences from the story with this form of the verb and say why this form has been used.

The past perfect (“had” + past participle) marks something that happened before the story's own past. Five examples from the text: …

Five sentences from the story in the past perfect are:

1. “For the last two years all our bad news had come from there...”
2. “I had counted on the commotion to get to my desk without being seen.”
3. “...Hauser had brought an old primer, thumbed at the edges...”
4. “It was in honour of this last lesson that he had put on his fine Sunday clothes...”
5. “For forty years he had been there in the same place...” …