hink so!"

"They'll never know."

Phillida shook her head, and not without some scorn. "You couldn't keep
it to yourself," she said. "You would _have_ to tell."

"Well, but not everybody," said poor Pocket. "Only my father, if you
like!" he added, valiantly.

"Mr. Upton would feel bound to tell."

"I don't see that. Didn't you hear what he said about a man's secrets
dying with him?"

"He's so kind! He says that; he said it again to me; but this is the
mystery of the day. It'll be the talk for months, if not years. And as
yet only you and I, in all the world, have found it out!"

She looked at him so wistfully, so sweetly and sadly and confidentially,
that he would have been either more or less than human boy if he had
failed to see her heart's desire, and how it was still in his power to
save her the supreme humiliation and distress of sharing their secret with
the world. He made up his mind on the spot; and yet it was a mind that
looked both ways at every turn of affairs, and even then he saw what he
was going to lose. Fred and Horace would not sit nearly so spellbound as
they might have done, would probably back their penetration of the mystery
against his! There would be no boasting about it in front of the hall
fire at school, no breathing it even to Smith minor out for a walk; no
adventure to recount all his days; and Pocket was one to whom the salt of
an adventure would always be its subsequent recital. But he could "play
the game" as well as Horace himself, when he happened to have no doubt as
to the game to play. And now he had none whatever.

"Phillida, if you wish it, I'll never breathe a syllable of all this to a
single soul on earth, I don't care who they are, or what they do to me!"

He wanted them to put him on the rack that moment.

"Oh, Tony, do you mean it?"

Her eyes had filled.

"Of course I mean it! I'll swear it more solemnly than I've ever sworn
anything in my life so far."

"No, no! Your word's enough. Don't I know what that's worth, after this
terrible week?"

And she cried again at its hideous memories, so that Pocket turned away
and put the camera together again, and wrapped it up in her waterproof, so
that he might not see her tears.

"I'll never breathe a single word to a single soul," he vowed, "except
yourself."

She caught at that through her tears. He could talk to her about it,
always, as much as ever he liked; it would be a bond between them all
their l