Page:Stanwood Pier--Harding of St Timothys.djvu/235

Rh Gradually the others were brought round, and at last the Crown adjourned forever.

"It will please Rupert when he's well enough to hear it," Frank Windsor said to Harry afterward. "If only he will some time be well enough!" Harry answered.

The next morning it seemed that Harry's wish might soon be granted. The welcome news ran through the school at breakfast that Rupert had passed the crisis, that the upward turn had begun. The prayer for the desperately sick was not said that morning in chapel. A new spirit of happiness seemed to have awakened and to pervade all the school exercises. It shone in the faces of masters and of boys.

Harry and Francis Stoddard went snow-shoeing together in the afternoon, and found no words to confide to each other their joy. Frank Windsor and Joe Herrick, among the candidates for the crew exercising in the gymnasium, forgot in their pleasant thoughts the strain that was being put upon their muscles.