And gradually he did learn to go in for most of the games: running, leaping, and climbing. One thing he absolutely refused--wrestling. "Why should gentlemen, who were to be gentlemen all their lives, fight each other?" he asked. "They would not have to fight as men; it was not kind; it was not pleasant; it was hard." The boys were hard on him for saying it, mocking him fearfully; but they could not shake him there. He was of right blue blood; never caving-in before them, as Bill Whitney expressed it one day; he was only quiet and _endured_. Whether the native Rouen air is favourable to freckles, I don't know; but those on Van Rheyn's face gradually disappeared over here. His complexion lost its redness also, becoming fresh and fair, with a brightish colour on the cheeks. The hair, growing longer, turned out to be of a smooth brown: altogether he was good-looking. * * * * * "I say, Johnny, do you know that Van Rheyn's ill?" The words came from William Whitney. He whispered them in my ear as we stood up for prayers before breakfast. The school had opened about a month then. "What's the matter with him?" "Don't know," answered Bill. "He is staying in bed." Cribbing some minutes from breakfast, I went up to his room. Van Rheyn looked pale as he lay, and said he had been sick. Hall declared it was nothing but a bilious attack, and Van Rheyn thought she might be right. "Meaning that you have a sick headache, I suppose?" I said to him. "Yes, the migraine. I have had it before." "Well, look here, Charley," I went on, after thinking a minute; "if I were you, I wouldn't say as much to any of them. Let them suppose you are regularly ill. You'll never hear the last of it if they know you lie in bed for only a headache." "But I cannot get up," he answered; "my head is in much pain. And I have fever. Feel my hand." The hand he put out was burning hot. But that went with sick headaches sometimes. It turned out to be nothing worse, for he was well on the morrow; and I need not have mentioned it at all, but for a little matter that arose out of the day's illness. Going up again to see him after school in the afternoon, I found Hall standing over the bed with a cup of tea, and a most severe, not to say horror-struck expression of countenance, as she gazed down on him, staring at something with all her eyes. Van Rheyn was asleep, and looked better; his face flushed and moist, his brown hair, still uncommonly short compared with ours, pushed back. He lay with his hands outside the bed, as if the clothes were heavy--the weather was fiery hot. One of the hands was clasping something that hung round his neck by a narrow blue ribbon; it seemed to have been pulled by him out of the opening in his night-shirt. Hall's quick eyes had detected what it was--a very small flat cross (hardly two inches long), on which was carved a figure of the Saviour, all in gold.