“How tall you’ve grown, Verny, and how well you look,” he said, gazing proudly at him; and indeed the boy was a brother to be justly proud of.  And Vernon quite returned the admiration as he saw the healthy glow of Eric’s features, and the strong graceful development of his limbs.

And so they quickly joined Mrs. Trevor, who embraced her nephew with a mother’s love:  and, amid all that nameless questioning of delightful trifles, that “blossoming vein” of household talk, which gives such an incommunicable charm to the revisiting of home, they all three turned into the house, where Eric, hungry with his travels, did ample justice to the “jolly spread” prepared for him, luxurious beyond anything he had seen for his last year at school.  When he and Vernon went up to their room at night—­the same little room in which they slept on the night when they first had met—­they marked their heights on the door again, which showed Eric that in the last year he had grown two inches, a fact which he pointed out to Vernon with no little exultation.  And then they went to bed, and to a sleep over which brooded the indefinite sensation of a great unknown joy;—­that rare heavenly sleep which only comes once or twice or thrice in life, on occasions such as this.

He was up early next morning, and, opening his window, leaned out with his hands among the green vine-leaves which encircled it.  The garden looked beautiful as ever, and he promised himself an early enjoyment of those currants which hung in ruby clusters over the walls.  Everything was bathed in the dewy balm of summer morning, and he felt very happy as, with his little spaniel frisking round him, he visited the great Newfoundland in his kennel, and his old pet the pony in the stable.  He had barely finished his rounds when breakfast was ready, and he once more met the home-circle from which he had been separated for a year.  And yet over all his happiness hung a sense of change and half melancholy; they were not changed but he was changed.  Mrs. Trevor, and Fanny, and Vernon were the same as ever, but over him, had come an alteration of feeling and circumstance; an unknown or half-known something which cast a shadow between them and him, and sometimes made him half shrink and start as he met their loving looks.  Can no schoolboy, who reads history, understand and explain the feeling which I mean?

By that mail he wrote to his father and mother an account of Russell’s death, and he felt that they would guess why the letter was so blurred.  “But,” he wrote, “I have some friends still; especially Mr. Rose among the masters, and Monty and Upton among the boys.  Monty you know; he is more like Edwin than any other boy, and I like him very much.  You didn’t know Upton, but I am a great deal with him, though he is much older than I am.  He is a fine handsome fellow, and one of the most popular in the school.  I hope you will know him some day.”

The very next morning Eric received a letter which he at once recognised to be in Upton’s handwriting He eagerly tore off the envelope, and read—­