unearthed," said
Polkinghorne kindly.

Barham picked up the newspaper.

"No, you don't," Otway commanded. "Put it down. . . . If you fellows
don't mind listening, I'll tell you the story. It's about Hate; real
Hate, too; not the Bosch variety."

NIGHT THE FIRST.

JOHN FOE.

John Foe and I entered Rugby together at fourteen, and shared a study
for a year and a term. Pretty soon he climbed out of my reach and
finally attained to the Sixth. I never got beyond the Lower Fifth,
having no brains to mention. Cricket happened to be my strong point;
and when you're in the Eleven you can keep on fairly level terms with
a push man in the Sixth. So he and I were friends--"Jack" and
"Roddy" to one another--all the way up. We went through the school
together and went up to Cambridge together.

He was a whale at Chemistry (otherwise Stinks), and took a Tancred
Scholarship at Caius. I had beaten the examiner in Little-go at
second shot, and went up in the same term, to Trinity; where I played
what is called the flannelled fool at cricket--an old-fashioned game
which I will describe to you one of these days--

"_Cricket? But I thought you rowed, sir?" put in Yarrell Smith.
"Yes, surely--_"

"_Hush! tread softly," Barham interrupted. "Our Major won't mind
your not knowing he was a double Blue--don't stare at him like that;
it's rude. But he will not like it forgotten that he once knocked up
a century for England v Australia. . . . You'll forgive our young
friend, sir; he left school early, when the war broke out_."

_Otway looked across at Yarrell-Smith with a twinkle. "I took up
rowing in my second year," he explained modestly, "to enlarge my
mind. And this story, my good Sammy, is not about me--though I come
into it incidentally because by a pure fluke I happened to set it
going. All the autobiography that's wanted for our present purpose
is that I went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, in the footsteps
(among others) of Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton, and--well, you see
the result. May I go on?_"

_But although they were listening, Otway did not at once go on.
Sammy had spoken in his usual light way and yet with something of a
pang in his voice, and something of a transient cloud still rested on
the boy's face. Otway noted it, and understood. When the war broke
out, Sammy had been on the point of going up to Oxford_. . . .

_Before the cloudlet passed, Otway had a vision behind it, though the
vis