ay get off
that brutal Latin exercise if Plummer takes on hard about this affair."

"Poor old Hector!" said Dicky. "If that's so, we shall owe him one good
turn at least--eh, old Compound Proportion?"

This pointed allusion to my misfortunes disinclined me to hold further
conversation with Richard Brown, and the meal ended in general silence.

As we trooped back to the schoolroom I overheard Faulkner say to another
of the seniors--

"I say, did you see the way Tempest flared up when I said that about the
pistol just now? Rather awkward for him, I fancy, if he's got one."

"What's the odds if he didn't shoot the dog?" was the philosophical
reply.

For all that, I had observed the Dux's confusion, and the sight of it
made me very uncomfortable on his account. Faulkner was right. It
would be precious awkward for any one who might be discovered to possess
a pistol. The fact that firearms were expressly forbidden at
Dangerfield College was itself, I am sorry to say, a strong presumption
in favour of Tempest having one. Besides, I had myself once heard him
speak about shooting rooks at home with a pistol.

Oddly enough, chance was to put in my way a means of setting my mind at
rest almost immediately.

"I say, kid," said the Dux, as I entered the schoolroom just before the
time, "I've left my Latin grammar in my locker upstairs. Look sharp, or
you'll be late again and catch it."

That was his style all over--insult and injury hand in hand. He only
practised it on fellows he really liked, too.

"I say, I can't," pleaded I. "Plummer will give it me hot if he catches
me again. I've got it pretty bad as it is."

"I know you have; that's why I tell you to look sharp." It was no good
arguing with Tempest. I knew he would risk his neck for me any day.
That would be much less exertion to him than running upstairs. So I
went.

The Dux's locker, I grieve to say, was a model of untidiness. Cricket
flannels, eatables, letters, tooth-powders, books, and keepsakes were
all huddled together in admired disorder to the full extent of the
capacity of the box. The books being well in the rear of the heap, and
time being precious, I availed myself of the rough-and-ready method of
emptying out the entire contents at one fell swoop and extracting the
particular object of my quest from the _debris_.

I had done so, and was proceeding to huddle up the other things into a
compact block of a size to fit once more into th