d hurriedly about the table, afraid that General Feversham,
or that some one of his guests, should have remarked the same look and
the same smile upon Harry's face. But no one had eyes for the lad; each
visitor was waiting too eagerly for an opportunity to tell a story of
his own. Sutch drew a breath of relief and turned to Harry. But the boy
was sitting with his elbows on the cloth and his head propped between
his hands, lost to the glare of the room and its glitter of silver,
constructing again out of the swift succession of anecdotes a world of
cries and wounds, and maddened riderless chargers and men writhing in a
fog of cannon-smoke. The curtest, least graphic description of the
biting days and nights in the trenches set the lad shivering. Even his
face grew pinched, as though the iron frost of that winter was actually
eating into his bones. Sutch touched him lightly on the elbow.

"You renew those days for me," said he. "Though the heat is dripping
down the windows, I feel the chill of the Crimea."

Harry roused himself from his absorption.

"The stories renew them," said he.

"No. It is you listening to the stories."

And before Harry could reply, General Feversham's voice broke sharply in
from the head of the table:--

"Harry, look at the clock!"

At once all eyes were turned upon the lad. The hands of the clock made
the acutest of angles. It was close upon midnight; and from eight,
without so much as a word or a question, he had sat at the dinner-table
listening. Yet even now he rose with reluctance.

"Must I go, father?" he asked, and the general's guests intervened in
a chorus. The conversation was clear gain to the lad, a first taste of
powder which might stand him in good stead afterwards.

"Besides, it's the boy's birthday," added the major of artillery. "He
wants to stay; that's plain. You wouldn't find a youngster of fourteen
sit all these hours without a kick of the foot against the table-leg
unless the conversation entertained him. Let him stay, Feversham!"

For once General Feversham relaxed the iron discipline under which the
boy lived.

"Very well," said he. "Harry shall have an hour's furlough from his bed.
A single hour won't make much difference."

Harry's eyes turned toward his father, and just for a moment rested
upon his face with a curious steady gaze. It seemed to Sutch that they
uttered a question, and, rightly or wrongly, he interpreted the question
into words:--

"Are you