s old motto:

"He who fights and runs away
Will live to fight another day."

"What has become of that promising junior whose name rhymes with hunger?
Nothing has been seen or heard of him for the last day or two. What has
come over him? His native modesty seems to have left him. He has
retreated to a back seat. Is he projecting further adventures in desert
islands, or giving lessons in punting? Anxious inquiries are being made
at the offices of the _Record_. Colonial papers in the neighbourhood of
desert islands, please copy."

Paul, on reading these paragraphs, knew well enough who was meant by
"two P's." They were the initials of his own name--Paul Percival.

But his mind was taken from these happenings by a message from the
sick-room. Hibbert had been up for a few hours each day, and had pleaded
hard with the doctor to be allowed to go out; so the doctor at last gave
the nurse permission. On two days the invalid went out with the nurse.

On the third day he asked Paul, as a special favour, to take him out.
Paul willingly consented, only too pleased to feel that he could be of
some help to him again. There was one favourite spot to which the
solitary boy used to go when he was well. It was in the garden attached
to the schoolhouse, apart altogether from the playing-fields. It was
marked "Private," and the boys, as a rule, were not allowed there. It
was chiefly used by the masters.

It was because it was so tranquil, so different from the playing-fields,
and because the sun seemed to linger around this old garden longer than
anywhere else, that the dreamy boy loved it, and used to steal there
when he was well.

"I'm so glad to feel you on my arm again, Hibbert!" said Paul, as he led
him to a basket-seat, with cushions, beneath a wide-spreading elm.

"I feel better now than I've felt for a long time, Paul. How I must have
wearied people lying up there!"

He glanced in the direction of the school.

"Don't say that, Hibbert. It sounds as though there was no one in the
world who cared for you."

"I know it sounds ungrateful; but even when we care for people, we must
get weary of them when they're ill a long time. I don't mean you, but
the nurse, and doctor, and--other people."

Paul knew that Hibbert was thinking chiefly of his father, who, absorbed
in his own schemes, had only been to see him once since his illness--on
that afternoon when Mr. Weevil had introduced him to Zuker.

To turn the boy's m