ll out?" said the voice, with plaintive cadence. "Poor
Billy!"

"He can't be," muttered Bertie. "Are you?" he loudly repeated.

There was no answer: but steps came along the road as Bertie checked and
pacified the gelding. Then Billy appeared by the wheel. "Poor Billy fell
out," he said mildly. He held something up, which Bertie took. It
had been Billy's straw hat, now a brimless fabric of ruin. Except for
smirches and one inexpressible rent which dawn revealed to Bertie a
little later, there were no further injuries, and Billy got in and took
his seat quite competently.

Bertie drove the gelding with a firm hand after this. They passed
through the cool of the unseen meadow swamps, and heard the sound of the
hollow bridges as they crossed them, and now and then the gulp of some
pouring brook. They went by the few lights of Mattapan, seeing from some
points on their way the beacons of the harbor, and again the curving
line of lamps that drew the outline of some village built upon a hill.
Dawn showed them Jamaica Pond, smooth and breezeless, and encircled with
green skeins of foliage, delicate and new. Here multitudinous birds were
chirping their tiny, overwhelming chorus. When at length, across the
flat suburban spaces, they again sighted Memorial tower, small in the
distance, the sun was lighting it.

Confronted by this, thoughts of hitherto banished care, and of the
morrow that was now to-day, and of Philosophy 4 coming in a very
few hours, might naturally have arisen and darkened the end of their
pleasant excursion. Not so, however. Memorial tower suggested another
line of argument. It was Billy who spoke, as his eyes first rested upon
that eminent pinnacle of Academe.

"Well, John owes me five dollars."

"Ten, you mean."

"Ten? How?"

"Why, her hair. And it was easily worth twenty."

Billy turned his head and looked suspiciously at Bertie. "What did I
do?" he asked.

"Do! Don't you know?"

Billy in all truth did not.

"Phew!" went Bertie. "Well, I don't, either. Didn't see it. Saw the
consequences, though. Don't you remember being ready to apologize? What
do you remember, anyhow?"

Billy consulted his recollections with care: they seemed to break off
at the champagne. That was early. Bertie was astonished. Did not Billy
remember singing "Brace up and dress the Countess," and "A noble lord
the Earl of Leicester"? He had sung them quite in his usual manner,
conversing freely between whiles. In fact, t