he sea to the Mersey, Gilbert was
dead and the proud ship was a wreck, sneakily destroyed....

Gilbert had left the beginning of a play behind him. He had regretted
that he could not finish it before going out to the peninsula ... had
believed that in it he would create something finer and deeper than he
had yet done ... and now it would never reach completion. The mind that
imagined it was no more than the rubbish of the fields when the harvest
is gathered....

His own work became tasteless to him. He turned with disrelish from his
manuscript. "What's the good of it," he said to himself, whenever he
looked at it. He tried to put himself into communication with Gilbert's
spirit, remembering that night below the White Cliff, when, he now
believed, Gilbert had tried to tell him of his death. A month before, he
would have ridiculed any one who suggested to him that he should attempt
to speak to the dead. "Spookery!" he would have said. But now, in his
eagerness to atone, as he said, for his failure to respond when Gilbert
had tried to speak to him, he put faith in things that, before, would
have seemed contemptible to him. But with all his will to believe, he
could not call Gilbert to him. There was a blankness, a condemning
silence....

"I failed my friend," he groaned to himself once, "When he felt for me
most, I ... I failed him!"

2

He had gone up to the Common with Mary, and had lain there, talking of
Gilbert ... of what Gilbert had been doing this time a year ago ... of
something that Gilbert had said once ... of an escapade at Rumpell's ...
and then Mary and he had gone home across the fields. As they walked up
the lane to the house, they saw a telegraph messenger ahead of them.
They quickened their pace. There was an anxious, strained look on Mary's
face, and as the messenger, hearing them behind him, turned and stopped,
she made a clutching movement with her hands. "Oh, Quinny!" she said,
turning to him with frightened eyes. The boy waited until Henry went up
to him, regarding them both with curiosity.

"Is it for us?" Henry asked, knowing that it was, and the boy nodded his
head. "I'll take it," he went on. "It'll save you the trouble of going
up to the house!"

"Thank you, sir!" the messenger said, and then he handed the telegram to
Henry. "Is there any answer, sir?" he asked.

"I don't know," Henry replied. "We'll ... we'll bring it down to the
post-office, if there is!"

He knew that there would