hearts together with a little tenderer tie than bound them to any of
the other fellows. They had been together all the four years, and if all
went well, and Bill Ward didn't flunk anything more, they would all four
go out into the world as men together at the end of that year.

He lay looking at them quietly as they talked, telling little foolish
jokes, laughing immoderately, asking one another anxiously about a tough
question in the exam. that morning, and what the prospects were for good
marks for them all. It was all so familiar and beloved! So different
from those last three hours amid suffering and sorrow! It was all so
natural and happy, as if there were no sorrow in the world. As if this
life would never end! But he hadn't yet got over that feeling of the
Presence in the room with them, standing somewhere behind Pat and
Tennelly. He liked to feel the consciousness of it in the back of his
mind. What would the fellows say if he should try to tell them about it?
They would think he was crazy. He had a feeling that he would like to be
the means of making them understand.

He told them gradually about Wittemore; not as he might have told them
directly after seeing him off, nor quite as he had expected to tell
them. It was a little more full; it gave them a little kinder, keener
insight into a character that they had hitherto almost entirely
condemned and ignored. They did not laugh! It was a revelation to them.
They listened with respect for the student who had gone to his mother's
dying bed. They had all been long enough away from their own mothers to
have come to feel the worth of a mother quite touchingly. Moreover, they
perceived that Courtland had seen more in Wittemore than they had ever
seen. He had a side, it appeared, that was wholly unselfish, almost
heroic in a way. They had never suspected him of it before. His long,
horse-like face, with the little light china-blue eyes always anxious
and startled, appeared to their imaginations with a new appeal. When he
returned they would be kinder to him.

"Poor old Abner!" said Tennelly, thoughtfully. "Who would have thought
it! Carrying medicine to an old bedridden crone! And was going to stick
to his job even when his mother was dying! He's got some stuff in him,
after all, if he hasn't much sense!"

Courtland was led to go on talking about the old woman, picturing in a
few words the room where she lay, the pitifully few comforts, the inch
of candle, the tea wi