Every day for a week Jack asked Philips breathlessly, “Well?” but Philips prudently would not admit any knowledge until the next week arrived, when Jack entered into his month’s allowance and produced the third and fourth half-crowns. “If you please, your Grace,” then said this prudent person, “the cob as is called Cuckoopint is down at Market Harborough, in Lord Brancepeth’s box there.” “He did buy him, then?” “Yessir.” “And he--Harry?” “His lordship, sir, went to the South Pole the summer before last with Lord Tenby and Sir Francis Yorke and two other gentlemen; his lordship have left the Service altogether, sir.” “Left the Guards!” Jack was dumbfounded. He had always been so pleased to see Harry riding down Portland Place or Kensington Road with all those beautiful horses and cuirasses and jackboots. “Where’s the South Pole?” he asked piteously. Of the North Pole he had heard. “I don’t know, sir,” said Philips, much bored; he had had enough of a subject which only brought him in four half-crowns. Jack had to wait till his ride was over and he could go in the house and get down his atlas and look for the South Pole; he did not make the position out to his satisfaction in the atlas and he turned to the terrestrial globe; then indeed he realized how many weary leagues divided him from his friend. He leaned on the great globe and put his head down on it and cried bitterly. Oh, how he hated his mother! It was his mother who had sent Harry away! “’Cause he’d done all his money!” he thought indignantly. But how good it was of Harry with no money to keep his word and buy Cuckoopint! His tutor came in and found him crying; poor Jack had the penalty of position--he was never left alone. The tutor asked in a rather dry tone what was the matter. Jack, ashamed of his grief, brushed the hot tears from his eyelashes and tried to check his sobs. “It is quite a personal matter,” he said with much dignity as he steadied his sobs. “It doesn’t concern anybody but me. Please don’t ask.” The tutor, though a severe man, had some tact and judgment; he did not ask, but took a volume from one of the shelves and went out of the room. To his mother it was convenient and agreeable that Brancepeth was out of London. She was not sensitive, but still it had been disagreeable to her to see him there when she had broken with him. Ruptures have always this unpleasantness, that people notice them. But he was away at the other end of the world, where they all went when they were in trouble, and where they were as good as dead--somewhere distant and barbarous--and in being so he showed more tact than usual, for with that loveliest and most useful of all qualities he had not been gifted. When she thought of his parting words to her she wished a lion or a bison to make an end of him.