ier strode on. His thoughts also were busy with memories of
the past. In one sense he was not alone; for before him, in fancy,
walked a boy--a rather surly, uncared-for looking young dog, with hands
in his pockets, coat thrown open, and Cricket cap perched on the back
of his head, as though in open defiance of the rain that was falling.
The road had been damp and dismal then; to-day it was dry and dusty;
but the heart of the man who trod it was no lighter than it had been
that evening ten years ago.

The old cobbler had been mistaken. It was not Joe Crouch, but Jack
Fenleigh, who had just passed the window of the little shop. He was
thinking of the first time he had come to Brenlands at the commencement
of the summer holidays, after having been kept back on the breaking-up
day as a punishment for sending a pillow through the glass ventilator
of the Long Dormitory.

"I didn't want to face her then," he said to himself, switching the
dust off his trousers with his cane. "And yet, how kind she was!
Never mind! she won't know me now. Valentine promised he wouldn't
write, and he never broke his word."

Jack had walked from Melchester. More than once in the course of the
journey he had hesitated, and thought of turning back; but the
sacredness of the promise made to a dying man had compelled him to go
forward.

He turned the corner, and slackened his pace as he saw before him the
old house nestling among the trees. There was no board with TO LET
printed on it, such as usually, in story-books, greets the eye of the
returning wanderer. The place was just the same as it always had been;
and the very fact of its being unchanged appealed to his feelings in a
manner which it would be impossible to describe. The white front gate,
whose hinges had been so often tried by its being transformed into a
sort of merry-go-round; the clumps of laurel bushes which had afforded
such good hiding-places in games of "I spy;" even the long-suffering
little brass weathercock above the stable roof, which had served as a
mark for catapult shooting,--these, and a hundred other objects on
which his eyes rested, recalled memories which softened his heart, and
brought back more vividly than ever the recollection of that faithful
friend, whose last request he was about to fulfil.

"I must do it," he muttered, feeling in his pocket for the ring; "I
promised him I would."

He pushed open the gate, and walked almost on tiptoe down the path,