to imagine what a last chapel service
must be like. The subject has been done to death by the novelist. In
every school story he had read, the hero had always felt the same
emotions: contentment with work well done, sorrow at leaving a
well-loved place. He had wondered whether he would want to cry; and if
so, whether he would be able to stop it. He had looked inquiringly in
the faces of those who were leaving and had never read anything very
new. Some were enigmas; some looked glad in a way that they were going
to begin a life so full of possibilities. Some vaguely realised that
they had reached the height of their success at nineteen.

But now that his time had come, his thoughts were very different from
what he had imagined. He felt the sorrow that is inevitable to anyone
who is putting a stage of his life clean out of sight behind him; but
for all that he had come to the conclusion that he was not really sad at
leaving. Fernhurst was for him too full of ghosts; so many dreams were
buried there. His feelings were mixed. He felt himself that he had
failed, but he knew that he was hailed a success. He half wished that in
the light of experience he could go through his four years again; but if
he did, he saw that in outward show, at any rate, he could never eclipse
the glory that was his for the moment. He remembered that sermon over
three years back in which the Chief had asked each boy to imagine
himself passing his last hours at school. "_How will it feel,_" the
Chief had said, "_if you have to look back and think only of shattered
hopes and bright unfulfilled promises?... To the pathos of human sorrow
there is no need to add the pathos of failure._" What was he to
think?--he whose career had so curiously mingled failure and success.

The service slowly drew to its end. The final hymn was shouted by small
boys, happy at the thought of seven weeks' holiday. The organ boomed out
_God Save the King_; there was a moment's silence. Then the school
poured out into the cloisters. Gordon hardly realised his last service
was over. He had been so long a spectator of these partings that he
could not grasp the fact that he was himself a participator in them.

He felt very tired, and was glad when bed-time came. He experienced the
same sensations that he had known as a new boy--a physical and mental
weariness that longed for the ending of the day.

For a few hours silence hung round the ghostly Abbey; then, tremendous
in the e