"I'm so sorry, old chap," he said, nervously; "do you feel really
better? I've been so miserable."

"I'm first-rate now," was the cheerful response; "it's awfully nice
getting your breath back again; it's only made me feel a little tired,
that's all!"

"It was all me!"

"Why that has been my comfort," said Roy, with shining eyes; "I felt
when I was very bad, that if I died, I might have lived for something.
It would have been lovely to die for you, Dudley--at least you know to
have got myself ill from that reason; it's so very tame when I get bad
from nothing at all; but I'm well again now, so I know God is letting me
live to do something else!"

"I was the one that ought to have been made ill to punish me," blurted
out Dudley, and then he was silent.

Roy's eyes rested on his flushed face with some wonder.

"It wasn't wicked of you to fall into the river; you couldn't help it."

A crimson flush crept over Dudley's face up to the very roots of his
hair; he picked the fringe of the counterpane restlessly between his
fingers, and kicked his heels against the legs of his chair. Silence
again: Roy looked steadily at him; and then an expression of
astonishment and bewilderment flitted across his face, followed by one
of strange, conviction.