painted,
fiery politicians, duellists, mysterious black-a-vized foreigners.
John connected it in fancy with the days when the gorgeous Duke of
Chandos (who had Handel for his chapel-organist and was a Governor of
Harrow and guardian of Lord Rodney) kept court at Cannons. He told
Caesar anecdotes of Dr. Parr, with his preposterous wig, his clouds of
tobacco, his sesquipedalian quotations, coming down from Stanmore; and
also of the great Lord Abercorn, another Governor of the school, who
used to go out shooting in the blue riband of the Garter, and who
entertained Pitt and Sir Walter Scott at Bentley Priory.

"What a lot you know!" said Caesar. "And you have a memory like my
father's. I'm beginning to think, Jonathan, that you'll be a swell
like him some day--in the Cabinet, perhaps."

"Ah," said John, with shining eyes.

"I hope I shall live to see it," Desmond added, with feeling.

"Thanks, old chap. A crust or a triumph shared with a pal tastes twice
as good."

One soft afternoon in spring, after four Bill, Desmond and John were
approaching the iron gates of the Haunted House. They had not taken
this particular walk since the day when Desmond got his Flannels.
During the winter term, Scaife and Desmond became members of the
Football Eleven. During this term Scaife won the hundred yards and
quarter-mile; Desmond won the half-mile and mile. In a word, they had
done, from the athletic point of view, nearly all that could be done.
A glorious victory at Lord's seemed assured. Scaife, Captain and
epitome of the brains and muscles of the Eleven, had grown into a
powerful man, with the mind, the tastes, the passions of manhood.
Desmond, on the other hand, while nearly as tall (and much handsomer in
John's eyes), still retained the look of youth. Indeed, he looked
younger than John, although a year his senior; and John knew himself to
be the elder and wiser, knew that Desmond leaned upon him whenever a
crutch was wanted.

The chief difficulty which besets a school friendship between two boys
is that of being alone together. In Form, in the playing-fields, in
the boarding-house, life is public. Even in the most secluded lane, a
Harrow boy is not secure against the unwelcome salutations of heated
athletes who have been taking a cross-country run, or leaping over, or
into, the Pinner brook. To John the need of sanctuary had become
pressing.

Upon this blessed spring afternoon--ever afterwards recalled with
sp