However, any boys who chose to do so were at liberty to write home, and, if their parents wished it, to leave at once.

He should send the whole school home if the fever spread.
The next day Arthur sickened, but there was no other case.

Before the end of the week thirty or forty boys had gone, but the rest stayed on.
There was a general wish to please the Doctor, and a feeling that it was cowardly to run away.
On the Saturday Thompson died, in the bright afternoon, while the cricket-match was going on as usual on the big-side ground.

The Doctor, coming from his deathbed, passed along the gravel-walk at the side of the close, but no one knew what had happened till the next day.

At morning lecture it began to be rumoured, and by afternoon chapel was known generally; and a feeling of seriousness and awe at the actual presence of death among them came over the whole school.