grasp when an opportunity presented itself.

As soon as John saw Caesar after the Easter holidays, he knew that,
temporarily, at any rate, he had lost his friend. Caesar, indeed, was
demonstratively glad to see him, and dragged him off next day to walk
to a certain bridge where a few short weeks before the boys had carved
their names upon the wooden railing, surrounding them with a circle and
the Crossed Arrows. But Caesar could talk of nothing else but Scaife
and cricket. They had both "come on" tremendously. Scaife's people
had a splendid cricket-ground.

Poor John! If he could have submerged the Scaife cricket-ground and
the Scaife family by nodding his head, I fear that he would have nodded
it, although he told himself that he was an ungenerous beast and cad
not to sympathize with his pal.

And before the boys got back to the Manor, Caesar said, not without a
blush, that he had learned to play bridge.

"I shall teach you, Jonathan."

"No."

"I say--yes."

"You're not going to play with Lovell and that beast Beaumont-Greene?"

"The Demon says no cards this term, when lock-up's late. And look
here, Jonathan, I've made the Demon promise to make the peace between
Lovell and you. You'll play for the House, of course, and we must all
pull together, as Warde says."

John might have smiled at this opportune mention of Warde, but sense of
humour was swamped in apprehension. Desmond went on to talk about
Scaife.

"He'll make 'em sit up, you see! The 'pro.' we had is the finest
cover-point in England. I never saw such a chap. He dashes at the
ball. Hit it as hard as you please, he runs in, picks it up, and snaps
it back to the wicket-keeper as easy as if he was playing pitch and
toss. And, by Jove! the Demon can do it. You wait. I never saw any
fellow like him. He's only just sixteen, and he'll get his Flannels.
You needn't shake your old head, I know he will. And we must work like
blazes to get ours next summer."

John discounted much of this talk, but he soon found out that Caesar
had not overestimated the Demon's activity. The draw at Lord's in the
previous summer had been attributed, by such experts as Webbe and
Hornby, to bad fielding. The Demon told John, with his hateful,
derisive smile, that he had remembered this when he selected a "pro."
Not for the first time, John realized Scaife's over-powering ability to
achieve his own ends. Who, but Scaife, would have made fielding the
princ