the guns, drove down the enemy,
and returned to the highest point to find their leader--shot through
the heart, and dead, and smiling at death. Of all the men who passed
through that blizzard of bullets he was the youngest by two years.

Warde told John that the Head Master would preach upon the last Sunday
evening of the term, with special reference to Harry Desmond. Could
John bear it? John nodded. Since the first breakdown in Warde's
study, his heart seemed to have turned to ice. His religious sense,
hitherto strong and vital, failed him entirely. He abandoned prayer.

Evensong was over in Harrow Chapel. The Head Master, stately in
surplice and scarlet hood, entered the pulpit, and, in his clear, calm
tones, announced his text, taken from the 17th verse of the First
Chapter of the Book of Ruth--

"The Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and
me."

The subject of the sermon was "Friendship:" the heart's blood of a
Public School: Friendship with its delights, its perils, its peculiar
graces and benedictions.

"To-night," concluded the preacher, amid the breathless silence of the
congregation, "this thought of Friendship has for us a special
solemnity. It is consecrated by the memory of one whom we have just
lost. You, who are leaving the school, have been the friends and
contemporaries of Henry Julius Desmond; his features are fresh in your
memories, and will remain fresh as long as you live.

"Tall, eager, a face to remember,
A flush that could change as the day;
A spirit that knew not December,
That brightened the sunshine of May."

"Those lines, as you know, were written of another Harrovian, who died
here on this Hill. Henry Desmond died on another hill, and died so
gloriously that the shadow of our loss, dark as it seemed to us at
first, is already melting in the radiance of his gain. To die young,
clean, ardent; to die swiftly, in perfect health; to die saving others
from death, or worse--disgrace--to die scaling heights; to die and to
carry with you into the fuller ampler life beyond, untainted hopes and
aspirations, unembittered memories, all the freshness and gladness of
May--is not that cause for joy rather than sorrow? I say--yes. Henry
Desmond is one stage ahead of us upon a journey which we all must take,
and I entreat you to consider that, if we have faith in a future life,
we must believe also that we carry hence not only the record of our