ps, I
shall say not a single word to dissuade him."

Dewes stared at her. This half-hour of conversation had made real to him
at all events the great strength of her hostility. Yet she would put the
hostility aside and say not a word.

"That's more than I could do," he said, "if I felt as you do. By
George it is!"

Sybil smiled at him with friendliness.

"It's not bravery. Do you remember the unfinished letter which you
brought home to me from Harry? There were three sentences in that which I
cannot pretend to have forgotten," and she repeated the sentences:

"'Whether he will come out here, it is too early to think about. But the
road will not be finished--and I wonder. If he wants to, let him.' It is
quite clear--isn't it?--that Harry wanted him to take up the work. You
can read that in the words. I can imagine him speaking them and hear the
tone he would use. Besides--I have still a greater fear than the one of
which you know. I don't want Dick, when he grows up, ever to think that I
have been cowardly, and, because I was cowardly, disloyal to his father."

"Yes, I see," said Colonel Dewes.

And this time he really did understand.

"We will go in and lunch," said Sybil, and they walked back to the house.

CHAPTER VI

A LONG WALK

The footsteps sounded overhead with a singular regularity. From the
fireplace to the door, and back again from the door to the fireplace. At
each turn there was a short pause, and each pause was of the same
duration. The footsteps were very light; it was almost as though an
animal, a caged animal, padded from the bars at one end to the bars at
the other. There was something stealthy in the footsteps too.

In the room below a man of forty-five sat writing at a desk--a very tall,
broad-shouldered man, in clerical dress. Twenty-five years before he had
rowed as number seven in the Oxford Eight, with an eye all the while upon
a mastership at his old school. He had taken a first in Greats; he had
obtained his mastership; for the last two years he had had a House. As he
had been at the beginning, so he was now, a man without theories but with
an instinctive comprehension of boys. In consequence there were no
vacancies in his house, and the Headmaster had grown accustomed to
recommend the Rev. Mr. Arthur Pollard when boys who needed any special
care came to the school.

He was now so engrossed with the preparations for the term which was to
begin to-morrow that for some whil