John had to sing three notes unsupported. He was smiling
and staring at Desmond. The first note came like a question from the
heart of a child; the second, higher up, might have been interpreted as
an echo to the innocent interrogation of the first, the head no wiser
than the heart; but the third and last note had nothing in it of
interrogation: it was an answer, all-satisfying--sublime. Nor did it
seem to come from John at all, but from above, falling like a snowflake
out of the sky.

And then, for one immeasurable moment--_silence_.

John slipped back to his seat, crimson with bashfulness, while the
School thundered applause. The Field Marshal shouted "Encore," as
loudly as any fag; but the Head Master whispered--

"We don't encourage _encores_. A small boy's head is easily turned."

"Not his," the hero replied.

Two numbers followed, and then the School stood up, and with them all
Old Harrovians, to sing the famous National Anthem of Harrow, "Forty
Years on." Only the guests and the masters remained seated.

"Forty years on, growing older and older,
Shorter in wind, as in memory long,
Feeble of foot and rheumatic of shoulder,
What will it help you that once you were strong?
God give us bases to guard or beleaguer,
Games to play out, whether earnest or fun;
Fights for the fearless, and goals for the eager,
Twenty, and thirty, and forty years on!
Follow up! Follow up! Follow up! Follow up!
Till the field ring again and again,
With the tramp of the twenty-two men.
Follow--up!"

As the hundreds of voices, past and present indissolubly linked
together, imposed the mandate, "_Follow up_!" the Head Master glanced
at his guest, but left unsaid the words about to be uttered. Tears
were trickling down the cheeks of the man who, forty years before, had
won his Sovereign's Cross--For Valour.

After the concert, but before he left the Speech-room, the Field
Marshal asked the Head Master to introduce Lawrence and John, and, of
course, the Head of the School. When John came up, there was a twinkle
in the veteran's eye.

"Ha--ha!" said he; "you were in a precious funk, John Verney."

"I was, sir," said John.

"Gad! Don't I know the feeling? Well, well," he chuckled, smiling at
John, "you climbed up higher than I've ever been in my life. What was
it--hey? 'F' in 'alt'?"

"'G,' sir."

"You sang delightfully. Tell your uncle to bring you to see me next
t