"It appears that this morning during the recreation half-hour, Edwin and another boy were so foolish as to dare each other to walk round the gymnasium roof on the coping that you can see from here." Mr. Foster moved over to the window as he spoke. Mrs. Greene followed him and stood looking at the long, high building jutting out from the side of the house. "Is that the coping?" she asked, "where that bird is?" A pigeon was walking jerkily along the narrow ledge, stopping every now and again to nod its head with meaningless little movements. "Yes, that's it. I need hardly tell you that it is absolutely against the rules to do so, and indeed no boy has ever before made the attempt. Edwin was to go first. He climbed out through a dormitory window, up a sloping piece of roof and from that on to the coping. He walked quite steadily the full length of the building, but at the corner the boys think he looked down and got dizzy. Anyhow he fell." Mr. Foster stopped for a moment. His voice was husky as he continued: "I was there in a few minutes; the matron too, but he was quite unconscious. When the doctor came we moved him into a ground-floor room, and the doctor fitted up a bed and made his examination." Mr. Foster looked desperately at the silent woman confronting him and said again: "I cannot tell you Mrs. Greene, what this means to me. It's the most tragic thing that has happened in all my school career." "I should like to see Edwin now, please," said Mrs. Greene, and was taken to the class-room where Edwin lay, his eyes closed, his rosy face pale and drawn, on an improvised bed. The matron who was sitting beside him, rose and offered her chair to Mrs. Greene who sat down, still silent. All through the evening she sat there, gazing unflinchingly at the small figure on the bed. The doctor came in and spoke to her, but she did not answer. Food was brought on a tray, but she refused it. The matron sat opposite her on the other side of the bed, occasionally moving a pillow or bending down to listen to the child's uncertain breathing. Towards eleven o'clock Edwin's heavy eyelids lifted and he looked vaguely at his mother. "I didn't know you were here, Mother," he said uninterestedly. "I've just come to see you, darling," said Dora Greene stooping to kiss him. "Am I ill?" he asked. "Yes, Edwin, you've had a bad accident." Presently he asked, still passively: "Am I going to die, do you think?" "You've hurt yourself rather badly, dear," his mother answered and could not keep a tremor from her voice. He lay still with closed eyes. At the first sign of consciousness the matron had hurried from the room. She now came back with the doctor, who lifted Edwin's hand to feel his pulse and then laid it gently back on the coverlet. Suddenly Edwin opened his eyes. "I say, Mother," he said, with more animation than he had shown, "if I'm going to die, I'd awfully like to smoke a cigarette first."