fever it was indeed, and of a malignant violence.
"He must have been walking round with it for several days," Doctor Vincent said. And when the doctor was eagerly asked to express an opinion as to the probable duration of the illness, he shrugged his shoulders and answered, "That's something I can't predict."
No one besides the doctor and the nurses was admitted to see Rupert, and the reports from the sick-room did not, for a couple of weeks, vary much from day to day. During all this time his temperature remained high; he was generally in a comatose, or, at least, a torpid, state; he had periods of delirium.
When, day after day, the boys stopped at the infirmary and received only the report, "He's just about the same,"—never the encouraging word, "He's better this morning,"—they began to grow more grave and apprehensive. Just when or how the undercurrent of dread began, no one knew; but it was whispered about that Rupert was not improv-
