e in our school days, and lifted
the public school's middle-weight pot, a champion swimmer, a massive
young man of six-foot-two in his socks, calling himself a crock.

"You remember that summer we did the cruise from Southampton to
Stranraer?"

"Heavens! yes," I exclaimed, "and we capsized the cutter in the
Solway, and you were laid up in a farmhouse at Whithorn with rheumatic
fever. Am I ever likely to forget it?"

"I'm not, anyway," said Dennis, ruefully. "That rheumatic fever left
me with a weak heart. I strained it rowing up at Oxford, you remember,
and that fever business put the last touches on it for all practical
purposes."

"Are you sure, old man?" I asked. It seemed impossible that a great
big chap like Dennis, the picture of health, should have anything
seriously wrong with him.

"I'm dead sure, Ron; I wish I weren't. Not that it matters much, of
course; but just now, when one has a chance to do something decent for
one's Motherland and justify one's existence, it hits a bit hard."

"Is it serious?" I asked--"really serious?"

"Sufficient to bar me from joining you chaps, though I'll see if I can
sneak past the doctor. You remember about three weeks ago we were to
have played a foursome out at Hendon, and I didn't turn up? I said
afterwards that I had been called out of town, and had quite forgotten
to wire."

"Which was extremely unlike you," I interposed; "but go on."

"Well, as a matter of fact, I was on my way. I was a bit late, and
when I got outside Golders Green Tube Station I ran for a 'bus. The
rest of the day I spent in the Cottage Hospital. No, I didn't faint.
The valve struck, and I simply lay on the pavement a crumpled mass of
semi-conscious humanity till they carted me off on the ambulance. It's
the fourth time it's happened."

"Of course you had good advice?" I asked anxiously.

"Heavens! yes," he exclaimed; "any amount of the best. And they all
say the same thing--rest, be careful, no sudden excitement, no strain,
and I may live for ever--a creaking door."

"My dear old Den," I said, for I was deeply touched. "Why didn't you
tell me?"

"Plenty of worries of your own, old man," he answered, more
cheerfully; "and, besides, it would have spoiled everything. You
fellows would have been nursing me behind my back, to use an Irishism,
and trying to prevent my noticing it. You know as well as I do that if
you had known I should have been a skeleton at the feast."

"You must promise