efused
point-blank to disclose even to the writer. And in return for the whole
concession the schoolboy was to give his solemn word and sacred promise on
the following points.

He was not to set foot outside the house without Baumgartner, nor to show
himself for a moment at the windows back or front.

On no account was he to confide in the doctor's niece Phillida, to give
her the slightest inkling of his connection with the latest of London
mysteries, or even of the scene, or any of the circumstances of his first
meeting with Baumgartner.

"You are bound to see something of each other; the less you say about
yourself the better."

"But what can she think?"

"What she likes, my young fellow! I am a medical man; medical men may
bring patients to their houses even when they have ceased to practise in
the ordinary way. It is no business of hers, and what she chooses to
think is no affair of ours. She has seen you very ill, remember, and she
had your doctor's orders not to let you out of the house in his absence."

"She obeyed them like a little brick!" muttered Pocket, with a wistful
heaviness.

"She did what she was told; think no more about it," said the doctor.
"Give me your hand on these your promises, and die on your feet rather
than break one of them! Now I trust you, my young fellow; you will play
the game, as you call it, even as the poor lads in these pictures played
it at Gravelotte, and die like them rather than go back an inch. Look at
this one here. No, not the one with the ridges, but here where we come to
bayonets and the sword. See the poor devils of the Prussian Guard! See
the sheet-lightning pouring into us from the walls of St. Privat! Look at
that fellow with his head bound up, and this one with no head to bind.
That's meant for our colonel on the white horse. See him hounding us on
to hell! And there's a drummer drumming as though we could hear a single
beat! Our very colours were blown to ribbons, you see, and we ourselves
to shreds; but the shreds hung together, my young fellow, and so will you
and I in our day of battle!" Baumgartner might have known his boy for
years, so sure was his touch upon the strings of a responsive nature, to
strike the chords of a generous enthusiasm, and to wake the echoes of
noble deeds. Pocket attacked his letter with the heart of a soldier,
hardened and yet uplifted for the fight; it was only when he found himself
writing down vague words, which nev