"That's a very polite and nice way of putting it, Percival," he smiled.
"You're a great deal more considerate of my feelings than I am of yours.
I tell you what"--his face became serious again--"it's done me a lot of
good since I knew you; since I was able to open my heart to you and tell
you about the little brother who was taken from us years back. I've
often wished that I was at Garside to stand by you. It must be very
lonely for you over there."

"No, indeed; it's far from lonely, but sometimes it has been very, very
hard to bear. If Moncrief had only stood by me, and all the rest of the
school had been against me, I would not have minded; but----"

"Ah, do not speak of that! It makes me miserable. It gave me a savage
delight at the time to fight that fellow. It made me a hero here; but
since I've begun to think a little I feel very far from a hero myself.
It would have been far better had I never fought. It has made bad blood
between you and Moncrief; it took from you your best friend, and set
your school against you. It did worse than that; it has widened the
breach between St. Bede's and Garside, and deepened the old feud, which
was beginning to die out. And now that it has been stirred into a flame
again, it will take longer than ever to die out."

He paused for a moment, as though deep in thought. Paul, too, was busy
with his own thoughts. He knew not how to answer him.

"Don't speak against yourself, Wyndham, for it pains me a great deal
more than it pains you. I owe you a lot for the help you gave me on that
night I went to Redmead; but there's one other debt, greater than that
even, of which I have never spoken. Speaking just now of your little
brother has brought it all back to me."

"Speaking of my brother?" repeated Wyndham, with that tremor in his
voice which had fallen so pathetically on Paul's ear when he had first
spoken of the dead boy.

"Your brother Archie. I haven't forgotten the name, you see, and I have
never forgotten--never shall forget--the story. I had never tried to
understand younger boys till then. We bigger boys rarely do, I'm afraid.
We think them only good for cuffing and fagging; so there's never much
sympathy between us. When we pass to the upper forms we only remember
the cuffs and kicks we got in the lower forms, and think it our duty to
pay them back with interest. But your story--the story of your dead
brother--stuck in my memory. I carried it back with me when I returned