d always before looked on the Chief
as a figurehead, who at times would unbend most surprisingly and become
a man; on the cricket field, for example, when in a master's match he
had fielded cleanly a terrific cut at point, and played a sporting
innings; at House suppers, and, most surprisingly of all, when a row was
on, Gordon had been unable to understand him. He could not dissociate
him from his conception of a headmaster--a sort of Mercury, a divine
emissary of the gods, sent as a necessary infliction. Yet at times the
Chief was intensely human, and when Gordon came under his immediate
influence and caught a glimpse of his methods, he saw in a flash that at
all times his headmaster was a generous, sympathetic nature, and that it
was his own distorted view that had ever made him think otherwise. The
Chief was so ready to appreciate a joke, so quick with an answer, so
unassuming, so utterly the antithesis of any master he had met before.

There were one or two incidents that stood out clearer than any others
in Gordon's memories of his Chief.

At the very beginning of the term, before a start had been made on the
term's work, the Chief was talking about Horace's life and
characteristics.

"Now, Tester," he said, "if you were asked to sum up Horace's outlook on
life in a single phrase, what would you say?"

Tester thought for a minute or so.

"Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," he hazarded.

The form laughed. It seemed rather a daring generalisation. But the
Chief's answer came back pat:

"Well, hardly that, Tester. Shall we say, Let us eat and drink, but not
too much, or we shall have a stomach-ache to-morrow?"

He had taken Tester's quite erroneous estimate as a basis, and had
exactly hit off Horace's character.

But the following incident more than any other brought home to Gordon
how extraordinarily broadminded the Chief was. Carter was construing,
and had made a most preposterous howler, it does not matter what. He
had learnt the translation in the notes by heart, and quite failed to
connect it verbatim with the Greek.

"There now, you see how utterly absurd you are," said the Chief. "You
have not taken the trouble to look the words up in a dictionary. Just
because you see what you think is a literal translation in the notes.
There lies the fatal error of using cribs. Of course when I catch a boy
in Shell or IV. A using one, I drop on him not only for slackness but
dishonesty. The boy is takin