start back, as he saw a messenger boy without, with a telegram
in his hand. Jack snatched the paper, tore open the covering, one
glance, and, "0, my sod, I felt it coming !" He reeled into his
chair, and sat there staring fixedly, and with a stony glare at the
paper, which he held half-crunched in his hand,, hardly even
breathing.
I sprang to his side, took the yellow form from his uncon
scious grasp, read it and silently handed it over to. Howards.
"Molly dead. ,Illness not at first considered serious. Rapidly
developed ; fatally. Funeral Friday."
Only thirteen words, but a life-hope shattered. Poor, afflicted
Jack, who had that day been the envy of so many.
We stood, awed by the terrible abruptness of the announce
ment, regarding each other without one word, dumb in the pres
ence of such sorrow.
For' a long time he sat thus. Then deliberately, but as if act
ing unconsciously, Jack raised himself, reached out for the two
letters in frolit of him and slowly tore them to pieces. Never
before in all my life did I witness the violent death of a hope,
and I pray God I may never do so again. •
He took the third letter, wrote something across the back, and
pushed it toward me. He seemed to shrivel together; he the
brawny athlete of the morning. "0, my God, my God 1 I ,ord
have mercy upon us," he groaned, as his head sank forward on
the table. "Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison, Kyrie Eleison." He
breathed it rather than spoke it. And I read what he had written.
We heard the distant sound of footsteps, both down the
corridor and outside in the quadrangle. "They're coming,"
Howards whispered to me, and I knew what he meant.
We could barely distinglish what they were yelling—" Be
rnard 'Jack Bernard! Where's Bernard? Three cheers for
Bernard!" and then three_ roars that sounded like an angry sea.
Then they came up, the whole hall full outside his door; the
whole campus full outside his window.
"They've come." Howards spoke half aloud, half to himself.
And Jack, too, knew what he meant. He raised his head slowly,