ed a hand upon his shoulder.

"You have been very good to the boy--God will reward you! The fear
sometimes oppresses me that he will not get over this illness."

The half closed eyes were blinking in a curious fashion. Indeed, Paul
saw what was suspiciously like a tear slowly making its way down the
cheek of the master. His emotion was no longer a mystery to Paul.
Hibbert's revelation had thrown a light upon it. He now knew that the
man whom he had regarded as without emotion--as one wrapped up
completely in his equations and scientific formulae--had yet a deeply
human side. Hibbert was the son of his dead sister, and he loved
him--loved him with a love that was a hundred times greater than that
which the boy's own father had ever bestowed on him. And Paul learnt a
lesson in that brief interview which he never forgot--that lying deep
down in the hearts of most men, sometimes overladen by rust, sometimes
in the midst of decay, may frequently be found a vein of purest gold.

"Don't say that, sir. He was looking better the last time I saw him. He
will pull round as soon as he can get out a bit."

"I hope your words will come true, Percival; but he's so frail. If he
were only strong like you--but there, it's useless talking. It must be
as God wills." Then his voice changed to its old frigid tone.

"You can go, sir."

Thus abruptly dismissed, Paul went out.

"Weevil's a puzzle," he said to himself. "I'm as far off knowing him as
ever I was; but there seems to be some warm blood in him, and that's
something. I thought he was all pothooks and hangers at one time; but he
can't be as bad as that. That shows you shouldn't go by appearances.
He's not half as black as I painted him."

Paul was very pleased that he could now visit Hibbert without
restriction, and that same night he visited him, much to the boy's joy,
and sat by his bed, as we have seen, till he slept.

Thus it was Paul took little heed of the school's attitude towards him
for the next few days. Then an incident happened which was to absorb his
attention still more. Thinking of Mr. Weevil, and his recent interview,
his mind went naturally back to that evening when, devoured with
curiosity, he had followed him to Cranstead Common. The more he thought
of it, the more he wondered what could have become of him on that night
he had so strangely disappeared from view before his very eyes. The
ground had not swallowed him up, for he had returned to school that same