"But the examination's on!" cried Leek, who could not understand any illness to be as important as the trial for the Orville.
"I wish I could have gone," Mr. Henry replied. "I lay very still all night hoping to get strength to appear, but it proved useless."
"When shall you be well enough to come back to college?" asked Dick Loftus, in rather a subdued tone.
Mr. Henry took one of Dick's hands in his; with the other he clasped Leek's. He did not reply at once, only looked out at them all with a strangely affectionate gaze.
"Should you miss me very much if I were never to come back again?"
"But you are coming back?" exclaimed Brown minor, leaning forward on the foot of the bed.
"I think not. I fear not. I have thought for some little time now that this might be the ending. But it has come on very rapidly."
"You—don't mean," hesitated Brown, "that you are—going to die?"
"I fear it may be so."
The boys stood awestruck. Their hearts seemed to have stopped beating.