At length he began, speaking in calm, unemotional tones that held perchance deeper pathos than a more passionate utterance could have endowed them with: "Long ago--twenty years ago--I was, as I have said, an honourable lad, to whom the world was a fair garden, a place of rosebuds, fragrant with hope.

Those, Kenneth, were my illusions.

They are the illusions of youth; they are youth itself, for when our illusions are gone we are no longer young no matter what years we count.

Keep your illusions, Kenneth; treasure them, hoard them jealously for as long as you may." "I dare swear, sir," answered the lad, with bitter humour, "that such illusions as I have I shall treasure all my life.

You forget, Sir Crispin." "'Slife, I had indeed forgotten.