Little wonder that the boy’s health began to give way; that he looked so pale and tired! The holidays were now almost over, but as yet nothing had been said about his going back to school, though Graham himself lived in secret dread of what he knew could not be put off for much longer. How, on the other hand, could he possibly resume the old life? The thought of what had been and never would be again――oh! that, he felt, he should not be able to bear――the dreariness, the loneliness, the hopelessness. Doubtless when he had first gone to school he had also been alone――but the difference, the difference now would be incalculable. There were days, in truth, when it almost seemed to him that it would have been better if he had never been given his happiness, since so soon it was to be snatched from him; and even though deep in his heart he knew he would not forget it if he could, there were days when he thought it would be well if all the past could be effaced from his mind, rubbed out as figures are rubbed from a child’s slate. * * * * * One afternoon he was sitting with his father in the library. It had been raining for the greater part of the day, and a fine drizzle was still falling, though the sky was beginning to clear. It had been raining, and the soft sound of the rain――the soft, dripping sound, and the sight of the blurred landscape, had somehow a soothing effect upon him. On his knee he held an open book over which his head was bent closely. A lassitude, mental and physical, was visible in his every little movement, even in the way he sat; and between his eyes and the printed page he looked at, there floated a dead boy’s face. A physical weakness weighed heavily upon him, a kind of stagnation of the very sources of his life, the vital elements, sapping all power to rise above a certain fixed and gloomy train of thought;――it was as if some spring within him had been choked, dried up.... It was finished!――finished!――finished! The word repeated itself wearily in his mind, like the monotonous beating of a metronome. He felt hot and feverish, and there was a dull pain at the back of his head. It was almost as if he were sickening for something.... Tired out, for his sleep of late was become very restless and broken, presently he fell into a kind of doze, from which he awakened, a few minutes later, to find his father gazing anxiously at him; and with sudden contrition he saw how selfish he had been in giving way thus to his grief. ‘Are you very tired?’ Mr. Iddesleigh asked gently. ‘Come over here and sit by me.’ He drew his son to him as he spoke, and Graham sat down on a stool at his feet. ‘What were you doing all this morning? Were you in the cemetery?’ Graham nodded. Mr. Iddesleigh laid his hand on the boy’s head. ‘You go there so often!’ he expostulated. ‘It is not good for you, Graham. What do you think about when you go there all alone? What do you go there for?’