time the bed shook under his anguish. I told
him how sorry I was, again and yet again, and I suppose eventually my
tone betrayed me.

"So you know who it is?" he asked, suddenly regarding me with dry bright
eyes.

"I couldn't help seeing the likeness," I replied.

"It's my mother," he said unnecessarily.

His manner was curiously dogged and unlike him.

"And you keep her photograph under the floor?"

"Yes; you don't see many about, do you?" he inquired with precocious
bitterness.

There was not one to be seen downstairs. That I knew from my glimpse of
the photograph under the floor; there was nothing like it on any of the
walls, nothing so beautiful, nothing with that rather wild, defiant
expression which I saw again in Ronnie at this moment.

"But why under the floor?" I persisted, guessing vaguely though I did.

"You won't tell anybody you saw it there?"

"Not a soul."

"You promise?"

"Solemnly."

"You won't say a single word about it, if I tell you something?"

"Not a syllable."

"Well--then--it's because I don't want Daddy to see it, for fear----"

"--it would grieve him?" I suggested as the end of his broken sentence.
And I held my breath in the sudden hope that I might be right.

"For fear he tears it up!" the boy said harshly. "He did that once
before, and this is the last I've got."

I made no comment, and there were no further confidences from Ronnie. So
many things I wanted to know and could not ask! I could only hold my
peace and Ronnie's hot hand, until it pinched mine in sudden warning, as
the whole house lept under a springy step upon the stairs.

"Not a word to anybody, you know, Mr. Gillon?"

"Not one, to a single soul, Ronnie!"

But it was a heavy seal that was thus placed upon my lips; heavy as lead
when I discussed the child with Uvo Delavoye; and that was almost every
minute that we spent together for days to come.

For Ronnie became very ill.

* * * * *

In the beginning it was an honest chill. The chill turned to that refuge
of the General Practitioner--influenza. Double pneumonia was its last,
most definite stage; the local doctor made no mistake about that, and
Coplestone appealed in vain against the verdict, before specialists who
came down from London at a guinea a mile.

It was a mild enough case so far. The boy was strong and healthy, and
capable of throwing off at least as much as most strong men. He was also
a capital little