to make certain, I
must play the spy, creep and crawl, do what I loathe to do--suspect the
innocent together with the guilty. It's almost breaking my heart."

"I can understand that, sir, after what you have done for us."

Warde smiled grimly. "I don't think you do quite understand," he said
slowly. "At this moment I am tempted, tempted as I never have been
tempted, to let things slide, to shut both eyes and ears, till this term
is over. Next term"--he laughed harshly--"I shan't stand in such an
awkward place. The deep sea will always be near me, but the devil--the
devil will be elsewhere."

John nodded. His serious face expressed neither approval nor disapproval
to the man keenly watching it. Afterwards Warde remembered this
impassivity.

"If I do not act"--Warde's voice trembled--"I am damned as a traitor in
my own eyes."

John had never doubted that his house-master would act. As for creeping
and crawling, can peaks be scaled without creeping and crawling?
Never----

"You are not to speak a word of warning," Warde continued vehemently.
"If you know what I don't know yet, still you cannot speak to me,
because the sinner in this case is a Sixth-Form boy. You cannot speak to
me; and you will not speak to him, on your honour?"

There was interrogation in the last sentence. John replied almost
inaudibly--

"I shall not speak--on my honour!"

"It is hard, hard indeed, that I should have to foul my own nest, but it
must be so. Good night."

John went back to his room, calm without, terribly agitated within. What
ruthless spirit had driven him to Warde's study? Yes; at last,
inexorably, discovery, disgrace, the ineffaceable brand of expulsion,
impended over the head of his enemy, to whom he was pledged to utter no
word of warning. Like Warde, he did not know absolutely, but he guessed
that Scaife had spent another riotous night in town since the match. He
had read it in the eyes glittering with excitement, in the derisive
smile of conscious power, in the magnetic audacity of Scaife's glance.
And then he remembered Lawrence's parting words--

"It will be a fight to a finish, and, mark me, Warde will win!"

Two wretched days and nights passed. More than once John spurred himself
to the point of going to Warde and saying, "Think what you like of me, I
am going to warn the boy I loathe that you are at his heels." Still,
always at the last moment he did not go. Some power seemed to restrain
him. But when he tried