so often in the old
days.

The old days! It was but yesterday that they had last walked there.
Yet what an age ago it seemed! and how impossible that the old days
should ever come back again.

He had not got far into the wood when he heard what seemed to him
familiar footsteps ahead of him. Yesterday he would have shouted and
whistled and called on the fellow to hold hard. But now he had no such
inclination. His impulse was to turn round and go back.

"And yet," thought he, "why should _I go_ back? If it is Oliver, what
have _I_ to feel ashamed of?"

And so he advanced. The boy in front of him was walking slowly, and
Wraysford soon came in view of him. As he expected, it was Oliver.

At the sight of his old friend, wandering here solitary and listless,
all Wraysford's old affection came suddenly back. At least he would
make one more effort. So he quickened his pace. Oliver turned and saw
him coming. But he did not wait. He walked on slowly as before,
apparently indifferent to the approach of anybody.

This was a damper certainly to Wraysford. At least Oliver might have
guessed why his friend was coming after him.

It was desperately hard to know how to begin a conversation. Oliver
trudged on, sullen and silent, in anything but an encouraging manner.
Still, Wraysford, now his mind was made up, was not to be put from his
purpose.

"Noll, old man," he began, in as much of his old tone and manner as he
could assume.

"Well?" said Oliver, not looking up.

"Aren't we to be friends still?"

The question cost the speaker a hard effort, and evidently went home.
Oliver stopped short in his walk, and looking full in his old friend's
face, said, "Why do you ask?"

"Because I'm afraid we are not friends at this moment."

"And whose fault is that?" said Oliver, scornfully.

The question stung Wraysford as much as it amazed him. Was he, then, of
all the fellows in the school, to have an explanation thus demanded of
him from one who had done him the most grievous personal wrong one
schoolboy well could do to another?

His face flushed as he replied slowly, "Your fault, Greenfield; how can
you ask?"

Oliver gave a short laugh very like contempt, and then turned suddenly
on his heel, leaving Wraysford smarting with indignation, and finally
convinced that between his old friend and himself there was a gulf which
now it would be hard indeed to bridge over.

He returned moodily to the school. Stephen w