ing, and that his mother was coming on from Chicago, and that a specialist from Boston had been sent for.
Harry went each morning into chapel with the fear that this day the rector would read the ominous prayer for the desperately sick. So long as that was omitted, he felt that Rupert's illness was not critical. Yet Doctor Vincent never spoke with any confidence about his patient; all he would say was that the disease had not yet reached its climax.
Francis Stoddard went about like one bereft; he seemed really to take no interest in his school life any more. He was listless in the class which he had once led; he went off in the afternoons alone on snow-shoes through the woods, repelling offers of companionship; he took part with only a perfunctory spirit in the exercises of the Pen and Ink, which had at first awakened his enthusiasm.
Harry noticed his apathy, and in unobtrusive ways tried to rouse him from it. He appealed to Francis for help in a dearth of manuscripts for the "Mirror;" he had Fran-
