what sort of a fellow you've chosen for a
pal. And it's not too late to chuck me. Rutford will put Verney in
here, if I ask him. And, by God! I'm in the mood to ask him _now_.
Shall I go to him, Desmond, or shall I stay?"

He had never raised his voice, but it fell upon the sensitive soul of
the boy facing him as if it were a clarion-call to battle.

Desmond sprang forward, ardent, eager, afire with generous
self-surrender.

"Forgive me," he cried. "Oh, forgive me, because I can't forgive
myself!"

After this breaking of barriers, Scaife took less pains to disguise a
nature which turned as instinctively to darkness as Desmond's to light.
A score of times protest died when Scaife murmured, "There I go again,
forgetting the gulf between us;" and always Desmond swore stoutly that
the gulf, if a gulf did yawn between them, should be bridged by
friendship and hope. But, insensibly, Caesar's ideals became tainted
by Scaife's materialism. Scaife, for instance, spent money lavishly
upon "food" and clothes. So far as a Public Schoolboy is able, he
never denied his splendid young body anything it coveted. Desmond, too
proud to receive favours without returning them, tried to vie with this
reckless spendthrift, and found himself in debt. In other ways a keen
eye and ear would have marked deterioration. John noticed that Caesar
laughed, although he never sneered, at things he used to hold sacred;
that he condemned, as Scaife did, whatever that clever young reprobate
was pleased to stigmatize as narrowminded or intolerant.

Cricket, however, kept them fairly straight. Each was certain to get
his "cap," [5] if, as Lawrence told them, they stuck to the rigour of
the game. This was Lawrence's last term. He had stayed on to play at
Lord's, and when he left Trieve would become the Head of the House--a
prospect very pleasing to the turbulent Fifth.

About the middle of June John suffered a parlous blow. He was never so
happy as when he was sitting in Scaife's room, cheek by jowl with
Desmond, sharing, perhaps, a "dringer," poring over the same
dictionary. This delightful intimacy came to a sudden end in this
wise. The form-master of the Upper Remove happened to be a precisian
in English. A sure road to his favour was the right use of a word.
The Demon, appreciating this, bought a dictionary of synonyms, and made
a point of discarding the commonplace and obvious, substituting a
phrase likely to elicit praise and m