newspaper. Which of you two is it that writes just like me?"

Foster solemnly took off his hat.

"Then you, I guess, will 'ear more of this," Tom Harrison declared;
"for the tale that it ain't you is a little too 'ot for us, isn't it?"

Susan stopped wiping her eyes and joined in a chorus of assent.

"I don't know what you expect to get," Foster said.

"You needn't bother about that. We know," Tom Harrison replied.

After a little more conversation we started on our way back to Oxford,
and as we left the garden I heard Tom Harrison say, "Two beers and two
bottles of stout as quick as we can 'ave em; my throat's like a
limekiln." And considering the amount he had said at the top of his
voice, I should think it was very likely true.

CHAPTER VIII

LUNCHEON WITH THE WARDEN

Our walk was certainly not a success, in fact I was very sick of it
before we reached Oxford, because I am no good at walking and cannot
stride along at a steady pace. And it also involved me in what, if
real diplomatists will pardon me, I will call diplomacy, in which art
or craft, or whatever the right name of it may be, I am most unskilled.
I was on the point of telling Fred that I knew the party of peashooters
when he, being in a much happier state of mind than he had been in the
morning, began to talk about Jack Ward, and to say that I was very
likely right about him, and that he was sure to be a nice kind of man
when one got to know him. Hearing this made me put off what I was
going to say, and when I begin to postpone anything I am lost. Second
thoughts with me nearly always lead to trouble, however good they may
be for other people. I think I must have taken a fatherly interest in
Ward, for what else it could have been which made me wish to shield him
I do not know. But I had seen him stand up in the dog-cart, and I
thought he had recognized me and had tried to make Langham turn back,
so I determined not to tell Fred anything until I had found out what
really happened. But I felt very uncomfortable, for I do hate keeping
things dark, and when he went on to say that the pea-shooting people
must have been unutterable bounders to go away and leave us in the
lurch, I was again on the point of telling him that Ward was one of
them, only he suddenly began to sing, which gave me time to think, and
frightened two children who came round a corner of the road. We were
quite close to Broadmoor lunatic asylum at that moment, and Fre