e
fire, he made up for in damned cheek."

He led a solitary life. When his fellow undergraduates deigned to call
upon him it was invariably for the purpose of a "rag."

Trade was the iron that had entered his soul; he could never forget
that his father was a grocer and provision merchant in a midland town.
His one stroke of good luck, that is as he regarded it, was that no one
at St. Joseph's was aware of the fact. Had he possessed the least idea
that the story of his forebears was well known at St. Joseph's it would
have been to him an intolerable humiliation.

Subservient, almost fawning with his betters, he was overbearing and
insulting to his equals and inferiors: since his arrival at St.
Joseph's his "scout" had developed a pronounced profanity. Rumour had
it that Graves was not even above the anonymous letter; but there was
no definite evidence that those received by certain men at St. Joseph's
found their inspiration in the brain of Reginald Graves.

Nothing would have happened, beyond increased unpopularity for Graves,
had it not been for an episode out of which Graves had come with
anything but flying colours, and which had procured for him a thrashing
as anonymous as the letters he was suspected of writing.

He was a favourite with Dr. Peter, the Master of St. Joseph's, and
this, coupled with the fact that the Master was always extremely
well-informed as to the things that the undergraduates would have
preferred he should not know, aroused suspicion.

One day Travers asked Graves to dinner, and over a bottle of wine
confided to him the entirely fictitious information that he was mixed
up in a divorce case that would make the whole of Oxford "sit up."
Next day he was sent for by Dr. Peter, who had heard "a most disturbing
rumour," etc. Travers had taken the precaution of confiding in no one
as to his intentions. Thus the source of Dr. Peter's information was
obvious.

The men of St. Joseph's were normal men, broad of mind and brawny of
muscle; they had, however, their code, and it was this code that Graves
had violated. Tom Little had expressed the general view of the college
when he said that Graves ought to be soundly kicked and sent down.

"Now, Bindle," remarked Dick Little, "you're a man of ideas: what's to
be done with Gravy?"

"Well, sir, that depends on exes. It costs money to do most things in
this world, and it'll cost money to make Mr. Gravy stew in his own
juice."

"How much?"