After prayers that evening, Mr. Brandiston, addressing the house, said in a voice which betrayed the depth of his emotion, ‘I should like you all in your private prayers to-night to remember Venniker; he is very ill indeed, almost at the door of death.’ There was absolute silence even before he spoke these words--for the boys anticipated what he was going to say--and there was absolute silence afterwards. Tears rose to the eyes of not a few among the boys; but they brushed them quickly away. That Mr. Brandiston should speak in that manner--he who was so stern and self-controlled, and so seldom used the language of religion--made the case seem doubly critical. And Harry Venniker was so young, so popular. Nowhere is the presence of sickness or death so awful as among the young. One whose spirit was not always serious has written of his own great loss: ‘O Death! thou hast right to the bold, to the ambitious, to the high and to the haughty; but why this cruelty to the humble, to the meek, to the undiscerning, to the thoughtless? Nor age, nor business, nor distress can erase the dear image from my imagination. In the same week I saw her dressed for a ball, and in her shroud.’ To the old Death cometh as a friend. But to the young he is a stranger, a foe. His cold step is abhorrent to the joy, the motion, the strong, happy, buoyant life of youth. It is the sense of contrast which creates this painful feeling. Who is there that has passed from the sick-room where one boy lies tossing between death and life through the playing-fields where all the others are at their games, and has not marvelled that the sickness could be possible--or the play? In the chapel of one of the great public schools of England is a memorial tablet recording the name of a boy who died during his school life, to the eternal sorrow of his parents, and on it are the words: ‘Beside him they had neither son nor daughter.’ What a tale! what a tragedy is there! And should Harry Venniker be cut off, the light of his parent’s home, the idol of his school? Was there no pity, no compassionateness for him? It was but five days since he had been seen, strong and beautiful, a hero among his comrades--and now! O Death, Death, is there no mercy with thee?