length, to his relief, Tom, a knowing youth of about fourteen,
appeared, with a cushion over one shoulder and a pair of sculls over the
other, and the embarkation was duly effected.

Tom was a privileged person at Willoughby. In consideration of not
objecting to an occasional licking, he was permitted to be as impudent
and familiar as he pleased to the young gentlemen in whose service he
laboured. Being a professional waterman, he considered it his right to
patronise everybody. Even old Wyndham last season had received most
fatherly encouragement from this irreverent youngster, while any one who
could make no pretensions to skill with the oars was simply at his
mercy.

This being so, Riddell had made up his mind for a trying time of it, and
was not disappointed.

"What! so you're a-goin' in for scullin' then?" demanded the young
waterman as the boat put off.

"Yes; I want to try my hand," said the captain.

"_You'll_ never do no good at it, I can tell yer, before yer begins,"
said the boy.

So it seemed. What with inexperience of the sculls, and nervousness
under the eye of this ruthless young critic, and uneasiness as to the
outcome of this strange interview, Riddell made a very bad performance.

"Ya-ow! I thought it would come to that!" jeered Tom when, after a few
strokes, the captain got his sculls hopelessly feathered under water and
could not get them up again. "There you are! That comes of diggin'!
Always the way with you chaps!"

"Suppose, instead of going on like that," said Riddell, getting up the
blades of his sculls with a huge effort, "you show me the way to do it
properly!"

"What's the use of showing you? You could never learn, I can see it by
the looks of you!"

After this particularly complimentary speech Riddell rowed ploddingly on
for a little distance, Tom whistling shrilly in the stern all the way in
a manner most discouraging for conversation.

But Riddell was determined, come what would, he would broach the
unpleasant subject. Consequently, after some further progress up-
stream, he rested on his oars, and said, "I've not been out on the water
since the day of the boat-race."

"Aren't you, though?" said Tom.

A pause.

"That was a queer thing, the rudder-line breaking that day," said
Riddell, looking hard at his young companion.

Tom apparently did not quite like it. Either it seemed as if Riddell
thought _he_ knew something about the affair, or else his conscience wa