There were a hundred seats more sheltered than that on which he sat, and by walking scarcely fifty yards he could have escaped the rain altogether.

But he sat recklessly on, and let the rain do its worst, his eyes still on the empty football field, and his ears ringing still with the merry shouts of the departed boys.
My reader, had he chanced to pass down that deserted walk on this stormy afternoon, would hardly have recognised in the lonely occupant of that seat the John Jeffreys he had seen six months ago at Clarges Street.

It was not merely that he looked haggard and ill, or that his clothes were ragged.

That was bad enough, but the reader has seen him in such a plight before.

But what he has not seen before--or if at all, only in passing moments--is the bitter, hard look on his face, changing it miserably.