to be quite an exceptional gathering this
year; let us hope it may contain a few sane men. There are none on the
present staff, and I only know of one among the trustees!"

Raffles refrained from smiling as his dancing eye met mine.

"I can understand your view," he said. "I am not sure that I don't
share it to some extent. But it seems to me a duty to support a
general movement like this even if it doesn't take the direction or the
shape of our own dreams. I suppose you yourself will give something,
Nasmyth?"

"Give something? I? Not a brass farthing!" cried the implacable
banker. "To do so would be to stultify my whole position. I cordially
and conscientiously disapprove of the whole thing, and shall use all my
influence against it. No, my good sir, I not only don't subscribe
myself, but I hope to be the means of nipping a good many subscriptions
in the bud."

I was probably the only one who saw the sudden and yet subtle change in
Raffles--the hard mouth, the harder eye. I, at least, might have
foreseen the sequel then and there. But his quiet voice betrayed
nothing, as he inquired whether Nasmyth was going to speak at next
night's meeting. Nasmyth said he might, and certainly warned us what
to expect. He was still fulminating when our train came in.

"Then we meet again at Philippi," cried Raffles in gay adieu. "For you
have been very frank with us all, Nasmyth, and I'll be frank enough in
my turn to tell you that I've every intention of speaking on the other
side!"

It happened that Raffles had been asked to speak by his old college
friend, the new head master. Yet it was not at the school-house that
he and I were to stay, but at the house that we had both been in as
boys. It also had changed hands: a wing had been added, and the double
tier of tiny studies made brilliant with electric light. But the quad
and the fives-courts did not look a day older; the ivy was no thicker
round the study windows; and in one boy's castle we found the
traditional print of Charing Cross Bridge which had knocked about our
studies ever since a son of the contractor first sold it when he left.
Nay, more, there was the bald remnant of a stuffed bird which had been
my own daily care when it and I belonged to Raffles. And when we all
filed in to prayers, through the green baize door which still separated
the master's part of the house from that of the boys, there was a small
boy posted in the passage to give the sig