The Hero of Garside School

by J. Harwood Panting

"Paul, Paul! Are you forgetting the promise you made to me so soon? Was it for this I told you my secret? Reveal my story to the police, and you will kill me—kill me, as surely as though you were to thrust a knife in my breast."

That was what the voice seemed saying to him. Paul pulled himself up with a jerk. What was he about to do? Betray Hibbert, the poor boy who had entrusted him with his secret! Betray Hibbert, who had clung to him and loved him through good report and evil, who had never shrunk from him when one by one the boys at Garside had shrunk from him as from a leper! God help him! What was he about to do?

He was about to turn back when that other voice whispered to him: "Your country first and foremost. You have a higher duty than the duty you owe to Hibbert—the duty to your country. Besides, this boy's father betrayed your father. Why should you shrink from betraying him? Eye for eye, tooth for tooth. Pay back the debt that has been owing so long."

Paul hastened on again, but again he paused as another voice—a voice that was full of wondrous and sublime melody—sounded in his ear: "Vengeance is mine, I will repay."

It seemed to him as he stood there in the moonlight, the stillness so great and solemn that he could hear his heart throb, that God had spoken. The danger to his country was not so great that it called upon him to give up the secret which had been entrusted in confidence to his keeping.

He could not be true to himself or his country by being false to Hibbert!

He would wait. Hibbert would get better. If the danger became real, he would lay bare his breast to Hibbert as Hibbert had laid bare his breast to him. He would tell him, fairly and honestly, why he could no longer keep his secret; then Hibbert would be able to warn his father, and he would be able to flee from the country he had sought to betray.

Paul felt easier when he had come to this decision. It seemed to him that he had divided his secret with God, and that he was now acting as He would have counselled him.

And surely His hand had been in it from the first—from the hour when he, Paul, had been shielded from his pursuers in his ride to Redmead to the hour which had brought the son of his pursuer to a sick bed, and induced him to pour his strange confession in his ear. Nay, could not the hand of God be seen in it still farther back, from the very hour when, at the risk of his own life, Paul's father had sacrificed his own life for the life of his enemy? Even at that time the hand of Providence must have been at work weaving the strange events which were still unfolding themselves.

Paul was on the point of turning back as these thoughts flitted through his mind when the sound of a footstep caused him to draw back hastily into the shadow of the hedge. Scarcely had he done so than a tall, lean figure, with head thrust forward, passed quickly by. It was Mr. Weevil.