Some Persons Unknown. Hornung Ernest William

in, Kenyon, and licked you, old fellow, when you needed it." The truth is, Forrester had long had all this on his mind; as he uttered the last of it, he almost forgot why he had spoken now, and what Mr. Harwood had said on the stairs.

      Kenyon lay very still, watching the darkling sky split in two by the window-sashes. He had dreamed of that school so often, he had looked forward to it so long. It was hard suddenly to stop looking forward, to have no more happy imaginary school-days from this moment forth; but if the real ones could never have been so happy, then he should feel thankful; and in any case there was less immediate necessity to be up and well, which in itself was a relief. It was sensibly darker, however, when Kenyon spoke, and once more his tone was a little forced.

      "I suppose you're right. I'm glad you've told me this, C. J. I'm not so keen now, though I have been counting… I suppose I couldn't even have called you C. J., eh?"

      "No, you'd have had to 'sir' me."

      "Indeed, sir! Then I'm thankful I'm not going, sir! There's the gong, sir, yes, sir, you must go and dress, sir! The governor'll bring you up with him to say good-night. And to-morrow – I've heaps of things to tell you to-morrow, C. J. I'll think of 'em all night – sir!"

      There were tears on his eyelashes, nevertheless; but the room was now really dark; his friend could not see.

      IV

      Forrester's disquieting apprehension of intrusion on his part, of that cruel intervention from which he shrank, was not for long a vague sensation. Mr. Harwood himself defined it, and with startling candour, that very evening after dinner.

      Forrester had described the latter part of his chat with Kenyon, the part arising from something Mr. Harwood had said on the stairs, and from that other thing which had long been in his own mind. "I wouldn't have Kenyon, now I know what it is like," he had averred, with all the earnestness he had employed upstairs.

      "You wouldn't get him," said Mr. Harwood, in sad irony. "He will never be well enough, Bodley is sure, to go to school."

      "Is Dr. Bodley a very good man?"

      "He is a very good doctor in ordinary, so to speak; but Kenyon's case is not exactly ordinary. Bodley is getting down a London man, a specialist, for a consultation. Kenyon knows about it."

      "Yes, he thought it was to see whether he might get up."

      "Whether there is the least chance of his ever getting up, as a matter of fact. I don't myself think he ever will. There is some hopeless disease of the hip. An operation is the only chance, and you know what a faint one."

      "I'm glad I'm here!" Forrester involuntarily exclaimed; and it was at this that Mr. Harwood had pierced him with his eye and spoken his mind.

      "I am glad too," said he, slowly; "yet I am sore – God knows how sore!"

      The young man moved in his chair, but did not rise. Mr. Harwood held him with his eye. Forrester leant his elbow on the table, his head against his palm, and met that bitter, pitiable, yearning gaze.

      "I am glad because Kenyon wanted you so much; sore, because he wanted you so much. Look at the reception he gave you, ill as he is! I never make him like that. I might have left him for weeks, alone with Ethel and the servants, and he wouldn't have welcomed me so. Yet I am always with the boy. I do everything for him. I have been another man to him, Charlie, since you were here last year. You taught me a lesson. I don't know whether to like you or hate you for it. You taught me to be my boy's friend – at any rate to try. It wasn't easy. We tired each other – we always did – we always may. We irritate each other too: he will seem frightened and fight shy of me. I suppose I deserve it – God knows! We have understood each other better, we have tired each other less – I am sure – since he has been up yonder. But all the time, mark you, he has been looking forward to your coming – to going to your school in the end. About that he has talked incessantly – as if it were the one thing to get better for – and about you. You're his hero, he worships you; I am only his father. You are everything to him…"

      Forrester was inexpressibly shocked and moved. "You are mistaken, believe me you are!" he cried earnestly. "He has been telling me already how good you are to him, of all you do for him."

      "Ah! he is a good boy; he is very grateful. He always says 'Thank you' – to me! Heaven, how I wish he'd forget that sometimes! But no; it was in those little things that I was continually finding fault with him, and now it's his turn. He has a special manner for me. He thinks before he speaks when he speaks to me. And I see it all! Why, I stand outside the door, and hear him talking to Ethel, and when I open it his very key changes. With you it's a hundred times worse. With you – God help me!" cried Harwood, with a harsh laugh, "I'm like a child myself … jealous of you … for winning what I never tried nor deserved to win."

      He wiped the moisture from his face, and sat cold and still.

      "I'll go to-morrow!" said Forrester, hoarsely.

      "You will do nothing of the kind," retorted the other in his normal voice. "You will stay as long as you like – and Kenyon needs you."

      V

      C. J. was early abroad next morning – as once before. The weather had cleared up in the night. Sunlight and dew did just what they had done that other morning of yester-year. Sounds and scents were the same now as then. So Forrester tried to imagine it was then, and to conjure Kenyon to his side. But Kenyon lay in bed behind yonder blind on the sunny side of the house, and his friend wandered desolate over last year's ground. He looked into the flagged yard where painted wickets still disfigured a certain buttress: he was sorry he had thrown cold water on "snob." On the lawn he saw other wickets, which no man had pitched, and worn places that had long been green. There was the peach-house, with the sun gleaming where once the rain had beaten an accompaniment to "Willow the King." He could hear the song – he can hear it still. Then he met John, who was visibly inconvenienced; and returning to the house, he found Ethel on the steps. She looked very fresh and beautiful, but the young man's heart was in the room upstairs, where her heart was also. A common bond of sadness drew them insensibly together. They remained there, very silent, till the gong sounded within.

      Something that Mr. Harwood told him, a letter in his hand, as they sat down to breakfast, caused Forrester to run upstairs the moment they rose. Kenyon received him with grateful eyes, but with a very slight salute this morning. Sunshine flooded the room, even to the edge of the bed. Things invisible in the dusk of the previous evening caught the strong light and the eye now – the bottles, the graduated glasses, the bed-table, the framed photograph of Kenyon's mother hanging on the screen. And Kenyon himself, with the sun clasping his long brown hair, and filling the hollows of his pinched face, was a more distinct and a much more pitiful figure this morning.

      "You know what's going to happen to-day, C. J.?"

      "The doctors are coming – the one from London. Your father told me just before breakfast."

      "Call them the umpires," said Kenyon in a queer tone. "Say they're going to give me in or out!"

      Forrester made no remark. Kenyon lay watching him.

      "You're perfectly right, C. J. I thought of that before. I thought of it in the night. I had time to think plenty, last night!"

      "Couldn't you sleep?"

      "Not a wink in the night. I've slept a little since daylight."

      "Were you – you were in pain, Kenyon!"

      "Don't speak of it," said Kenyon, grimly. "It was so bad that I didn't care what happened to me; and I don't care now, when I remember it. I'm thankful the doctors are coming this morning – I mean the umpires. Anything's better than last night over again. I've felt nothing like it before."

      "And you never will again, old fellow! I know you won't. They'll see to that!"

      "Will they?" Kenyon made a wistful pause. "So I thought up to last night: I thought they'd get me up and out again. In the night I gave up thinking so. I lay here, C. J., and asked only to be put out of my misery. I never had such a bad night before – nothing like. I've had my bad ones, but I used to grin and bear it, and think away of St. Crispin's, and you,