since echoed back on to fuller knowledge ominously.  If it had not been that Archelaus, the free-speaker and the vindictive One of the family, was still in Australia, and that Ishmael spent a large part of his holidays with friends of the Parson’s in Devon and Somerset, the conspiracy of secrecy, wise or unwise, could not have lasted so long.  He stared at Hilaria and his fingers dug into the turf at either side of him.

At that moment Killigrew relieved the tension by jumping up and calling a wild, long-drawn “Hullo-o” to the approaching boys.  They came running up the slope and flung themselves down in a circle, while Polkinghorne major, a big, jolly, simple-minded boy, one of the best liked in the school, laid audacious hands on the bag, which Hilaria snatched from him with a shriek.

Doughty had ensconced himself by her, crowding between her and Ishmael to do so, a manoeuvre which the latter, rather to Doughty’s surprise, did not seem to resent.  This was the more odd as the boys had several times already, both in school and out of it, come into conflict over trifling matters, not so much from any desire to quarrel as because they were by nature extremely antipathetic.  Ishmael disliked Doughty and took little trouble to hide the fact.  He hated his pasty sleekness, which made him think of a fat pale grub, and he hated the way the elder boy hung round Killigrew; not from jealousy—­Ishmael still cherished aloofness too dearly for that—­but from some instinct which told him Doughty was evil.  Killigrew lay opposite Doughty now, looking oddly girlish with his slim form and colourless face, that would have been insipid but for his too red mouth.  There was a white incisiveness about Killigrew, however, a flame-like quality quaintly expressed in his hair, that promised the possibility of many things, and showed up sharply in comparison with the gross but hard bulk of Doughty.  There had been no real reason till this evening, when Hilaria had told of his evil-speaking, for Ishmael to dislike Doughty, but now he knew that he had done so all along.

Doughty hated Ishmael because he did not understand him, and he was of the breed which hates the incomprehensible.  Though he had only joined the preceding term, Doughty was nearly seventeen, and owing to a spinal weakness of his youth he had till now been educated at home.  He came from Devonshire, which would not have mattered had he been popular, but which, as he was not, was frequently thrown at him as a disadvantage.  Now, as he lay beside Ishmael, he stared at him with a something slyly exultant in his look, but the younger boy failed to meet his eyes and merely gazed serenely into vacancy.  Hilaria settled herself, opened the bag, and disentangled from the ribbons of her dancing shoes the precious number of All the Year Round that contained the instalment of “The Woman in White” they had all been so eagerly awaiting.

The boys left off fidgeting and became mouse-still, while only the low voice of the girl reading of the helpless lovers, of the terrible smiling Count Fosco and his grim wife, broke the silence.  The boys lay, thrilled by the splendid melodrama, their little differences forgotten with the rest of their personal affairs, and so they all stayed, Hilaria as enthralled as they, while unperceived the light began to fade and evening to creep over the moor.