“I say, talking about this row of Rupert Ray’s, isn’t the Gray Doe going to catch it to-morrow, by jove?”

In my anxiety about Doe I forgot that I was banned.

“What’s he going to get?” My voice sounded husky and strange.  The boys didn’t answer me or show that they had heard.  They ostentatiously proceeded with their conversation.  Even Pennybet had his back turned.  I flung myself into my bed in a way that nearly broke the springs, and, pulling the clothes furiously over my head, left my bare feet showing, at which several boys laughed contemptuously.

Oh, the horrid activity of my wide-awake brain!  I couldn’t sleep, and even found difficulty in keeping my eyes shut.  Once, as I raised my weary lids, I found that the lights had gone out since I last opened my eyes.  And my headache, which had spread to the back of my neck, was getting but little relief from my frequent changes of position.  Oh, the horrible conglomeration of ideas that crowded my mind!  Recent scenes and conversations entangled themselves in one another.  Ray did it—­Ray did it—­my darling little son—­good-bye and God bless you—­there has been no bias, prejudice, or bigotry, but heaps of love from your devoted and affectionate mother—­Ray did it—­it’s good-bye to him, I suppose—­good-bye and God bless you—­

“Good-night, Ray.”

That must be Doe’s voice; it came from reality and not from dreams:  it came loudly out of the silence of the dormitory and not from the chorus of conflicting sentences droning in my mind:  it was a real voice, but I was too tired and too far lost in stupor to answer it:  good-night, Ray—­it’s good-bye to him, I suppose—­heaps of love—­there was some comfort in that—­heaps of love from your devoted and affectionate mother.  Ah! when shall I get properly off to sleep?  Let me turn over on to my other side and put my hand under the pillow—­but it was young Ray—­Ray did it—­Ray did it—­how that detestable sentence swells till it packs my head!—­and I must be asleep now, for I see Fillet fitting a rope across the door of an unknown bedroom wherein I am confined with some invisible Terror which drives me out of my bed:  as I rush into the passage the rope trips me up, and I fall forwards but am saved from injury by my mother’s arms:  she catches me in the dark and says something about my darling little son.  And she remonstrates with Fillet, who is standing by that dreadful bedroom door, till he merges into Stanley listening shame-facedly to my mother’s silvery, chiding laugh and assuring her that the inquest was conducted in a strictly impartial and disinterested way.  He changes into old Doctor Chapman, who tells her that Freedham died early this morning.  For everything changes in the dream except one thing:  which is that there is a head aching somewhere; now it is my own, now someone else’s.  I draw my mother along a passage to a window and explain that the pencil-mark on the glass is the register of my height.  I put my back against the wall to let her see that I can just reach the mark, when lo! it is a great distance above me.  I get on the cold stone window-sill that I may reach it, and would fall a thousand feet, only something in my breast goes “click”—­and the dream was gone.  With my return to consciousness came the knowledge that the headache had been my own throughout.