fore he grew aware that anyone was near."

"Perhaps he wants to be a sailor," suggested Dewes.

"No, I do not think it is that," Sybil answered quietly. "If it were so,
he would have told me."

"Yes," Dewes admitted. "Yes, he would have told you. I was wrong."

"You see," Mrs. Linforth continued, as though Dewes had not interrupted,
"it is not natural for a boy at his age to want to be alone, is it? I
don't think it is good either. It is not natural for a boy of his age to
be thoughtful. I am not sure that that is good. I am, to tell you the
truth, very troubled."

Dewes looked at her sharply. Something, not so much in her words as in
the careful, slow manner of her speech, warned him that she was not
telling him all of the trouble which oppressed her. Her fears were more
definite than she had given him as yet reason to understand. There was
not enough in what she had said to account for the tense clasp of her
hands, and the glint of terror in her eyes.

"Anyhow, he's going to the big school next term," he said; "that is, if
you haven't changed your mind since you last wrote to me, and I hope you
haven't changed your mind. All that he wants really," the Colonel added
with unconscious cruelty, "is companions of his own age. He passed in
well, didn't he?"

Sybil Linforth's face lost for the moment all its apprehension. A smile
of pride made her face very tender, and as she turned to Dewes he thought
to himself that really her eyes were beautiful.

"Yes, he passed in very high," she said.

"Eton, isn't it?" said Dewes. "Whose house?"

She mentioned the name and added: "His father was there before him." Then
she rose from her seat. "Would you like to see Dick? I will show you him.
Come quietly."

She led the way across the lawn towards an open window. It was a day of
sunshine; the garden was bright with flowers, and about the windows
rose-trees climbed the house-walls. It was a house of red brick, darkened
by age, and with a roof of tiles. To Dewes' eyes, nestling as it did
beneath the great grass Downs, it had a most homelike look of comfort.
Sybil turned with a finger on her lips.

"Keep this side of the window," she whispered, "or your shadow will fall
across the floor."

Standing aside as she bade him, he looked into the room. He saw a boy
seated at a table with his head between his hands, immersed in a book
which lay before him. He was seated with his side towards the window and
his hands concealed his