entations which--so far as he could attach a meaning to them--
meant what was false. But he added that if the Memorialists would
kindly put these charges into writing, defining the practices
complained of, and naming the persons accused, they should be dealt
with in the proper way which (he understood) the law provided."

"Capital," said I. "Your Principal is no fool. Go off straight and
consult him. Take these papers--the whole bundle--"

Foe took them up and pushed them into the pockets of his great-coat.

"_You_ think he's dangerous?" he asked again, in an absent-minded
way.

"Eh? . . . Oh, you're talking of Farrell?" said I. "Farrell's a
fool, and fools are always dangerous."

Thereupon Jack Foe did and said that which I had afterwards some
cause to remember. He passed his hand over his forehead, much as a
man might brush away a cobweb flung across his evening walk between
hedges. "That man makes me tired," he said; "extraordinarily tired.
For two nights I've been trying not to dream about him. It was very
good of you to come, Roddy. You shall run me over in your taxi and
I'll speak to Travers. If the man is a fool--"

"A dangerous fool," I corrected.

"Coward, too, I should judge. Yes, certainly, I'll speak to
Travers."

I put down Foe at the gates of his College and speeded home.
Jimmy had breakfasted and gone forth to take the air. I sat
down to open my letters and answer them. In the middle of this my
agent arrived. We lunched together and spent the afternoon
canvassing. This lasted until dinner, for which I returned to my
Club. Thence a taxi took me East again to Bethnal Green for a
meeting. The importance of these details is that they kept me from
having word with Jimmy, or seeing fur or feather of him, for more
than twenty-four hours.

Nor did I find him in my chambers when I got home, soon after eleven.
He was a youth of many engagements. So I mixed myself a drink and
whiled away three-quarters of an hour with a solitary pipe and the
bundle of evening papers set out for me by Jephson, who lived out
with his wife and family and retired to domestic joys at 9.30.

The evening papers had let down the Silversmiths' College pretty
easily on the whole. But one of them--an opposition rag which
specialised in the politics, especially gutter politics, of South
London and was owned by a ring of contractors--had come out with a
virulent attack, headed "Vivisection in Our Midst." The art