g.

"Thanks, old chap. A crust or a triumph shared with a pal tastes twice
as good."

One soft afternoon in spring, after four Bill, Desmond and John were
approaching the iron gates of the Haunted House. They had not taken this
particular walk since the day when Desmond got his Flannels. During the
winter term, Scaife and Desmond became members of the Football Eleven.
During this term Scaife won the hundred yards and quarter-mile; Desmond
won the half-mile and mile. In a word, they had done, from the athletic
point of view, nearly all that could be done. A glorious victory at
Lord's seemed assured. Scaife, Captain and epitome of the brains and
muscles of the Eleven, had grown into a powerful man, with the mind, the
tastes, the passions of manhood. Desmond, on the other hand, while
nearly as tall (and much handsomer in John's eyes), still retained the
look of youth. Indeed, he looked younger than John, although a year his
senior; and John knew himself to be the elder and wiser, knew that
Desmond leaned upon him whenever a crutch was wanted.

The chief difficulty which besets a school friendship between two boys
is that of being alone together. In Form, in the playing-fields, in the
boarding-house, life is public. Even in the most secluded lane, a Harrow
boy is not secure against the unwelcome salutations of heated athletes
who have been taking a cross-country run, or leaping over, or into, the
Pinner brook. To John the need of sanctuary had become pressing.

Upon this blessed spring afternoon--ever afterwards recalled with
special affection--a retreat was suddenly provided. As the boys jumped
over the last stile into the lane which led to the Haunted House,
Desmond exclaimed--

"By Jove, the gates are open!"

Then they saw that a man, a sort of caretaker, was in the act of
shutting them.

"May we go in?" John asked civilly.

The man hesitated, eyeing the boys. Desmond's smile melted him, as it
would have melted a mummy.

"There's nothing to see," he said.

Then, in answer to a few eager questions, he told the story of the
Haunted House; haunted, indeed, by the ghosts of what might have been. A
city magnate owned the place. He had bought it because he wished to
educate his only son at Harrow as a "Home-Boarder," or day-boy. A few
weeks before the boy should have joined the school, he fell ill with
diphtheria, and died. The mother, who nursed him, caught the disease and
died also. The father, left alone, turne