entiously 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 sign of silence to
the rest assembled in the hall, quite identically as in the dim old
days; the picture was absolutely unchanged; it was only we who were
out of it in body and soul.

On our side of the baize door a fine hospitality and a finer flow of
spirits were the order of the night. There was a sound representative
assortment of quite young Old Boys, to whom ours was a prehistoric
time, and in the trough of their modern chaff and chat we old stagers
might well have been left far astern of the fun. Yet it was Raffles
who was the life and soul of the party, and that not by meretricious
virtue of his cricket. There happened not to be another cricketer
among us, and it was