Appearances were so unlike "sullenness," or any thing else they expected to find, that the invading crew stood in sudden discomfiture of spirit. Two or three of them began to back out; but Mr. Henry held out both his hands with a sweet smile of welcome. "I hoped some of you might come to see me this holiday, when you knew I was ill. Thank you all, my dear lads." "But we didn't come to see you because you were ill; we didn't know it," cried truthful, open Dick. "I'm afraid we came for something else. We thought you were stopping away in vexation, sir, because Paradyne was not going up for the Orville." Mr. Henry gently shook his head. "It is by my advice that Paradyne does not go up. I should have been vexed if he had. And now tell me how you are spending your holiday." He seemed to speak with a slow, faint voice, and breath that did not come so freely as it ought. The boys made no answer. They were taking in everything, and had not yet regained their audacity. Lamb had fully meant to address him as Mr. Paradyne, and go in for a sneer, but somehow could not readily get the name out, and felt crestfallen in consequence. "Are you staying away on account of illness, Mr. Henry?" asked Leek. "Don't you see that I am?" "But the examination's on!" cried Leek, who could not understand any illness to be as important as the trial for the Orville. "I wish I could have gone," Mr. Henry replied. "I lay very still all night hoping to get strength to appear, but it proved useless." "When shall you be well enough to come back to college?" asked Dick Loftus, in rather a subdued tone. Mr. Henry took one of Dick's hands in his; with the other he clasped Leek's. He did not reply at once, only looked out at them all with a strangely affectionate gaze. "Should you miss me very much if I were never to come back again?" "But you _are_ coming back?" exclaimed Brown minor, leaning forward on the foot of the bed. "I think not. I fear not. I have thought for some little time now that this might be the ending. But it has come on very rapidly." "You—don't mean," hesitated Brown, "that you are—going to die?" "I fear it may be so." The boys stood awestruck. Their hearts seemed to have stopped beating. "But, Mr. Henry—what a dreadful thing!" "Oh, boys, it may be a happy thing. God knows what is best for me." "Why don't you have a doctor?" "Your friend Mrs. Butter's gone for one now," he answered, with a smile. "And I went into London yesterday morning and saw a great physician. It was the cause of my absence from class." They remembered the absence quickly enough, and also the row in the quadrangle afterwards, which he had quelled.—Had that disturbance anything to do with this sudden increase of illness? The physician might have said it had.