"You will do nothing of the kind," retorted the other in his normal voice. "You will stay as long as you like--and Kenyon needs you." V C. J. was early abroad next morning--as once before. The weather had cleared up in the night. Sunlight and dew did just what they had done that other morning of yester-year. Sounds and scents were the same now as then. So Forrester tried to imagine it _was_ then, and to conjure Kenyon to his side. But Kenyon lay in bed behind yonder blind on the sunny side of the house, and his friend wandered desolate over last year's ground. He looked into the flagged yard where painted wickets still disfigured a certain buttress: he was sorry he had thrown cold water on "snob." On the lawn he saw other wickets, which no man had pitched, and worn places that had long been green. There was the peach-house, with the sun gleaming where once the rain had beaten an accompaniment to "Willow the King." He could hear the song--he can hear it still. Then he met John, who was visibly inconvenienced; and returning to the house, he found Ethel on the steps. She looked very fresh and beautiful, but the young man's heart was in the room upstairs, where her heart was also. A common bond of sadness drew them insensibly together. They remained there, very silent, till the gong sounded within. Something that Mr. Harwood told him, a letter in his hand, as they sat down to breakfast, caused Forrester to run upstairs the moment they rose. Kenyon received him with grateful eyes, but with a very slight salute this morning. Sunshine flooded the room, even to the edge of the bed. Things invisible in the dusk of the previous evening caught the strong light and the eye now--the bottles, the graduated glasses, the bed-table, the framed photograph of Kenyon's mother hanging on the screen. And Kenyon himself, with the sun clasping his long brown hair, and filling the hollows of his pinched face, was a more distinct and a much more pitiful figure this morning. "You know what's going to happen to-day, C. J.?" "The doctors are coming--the one from London. Your father told me just before breakfast." "Call them the umpires," said Kenyon in a queer tone. "Say they're going to give me in or out!" Forrester made no remark. Kenyon lay watching him. "You're perfectly right, C. J. I thought of that before. I thought of it in the night. I had time to think plenty, last night!" "Couldn't you sleep?" "Not a wink in the night. I've slept a little since daylight." "Were you--you were in pain, Kenyon!" "Don't speak of it," said Kenyon, grimly. "It was so bad that I didn't care what happened to me; and I don't care now, when I remember it. I'm thankful the doctors are coming this morning--I mean the umpires. Anything's better than last night over again. I've felt nothing like it before." "And you never will again, old fellow! I know you won't. They'll see to that!"