e?" I asked.

"You aren't much good at guessing," Murray answered; "but I should say
that having heard that you were not going to read your essay to
Edwardes, and Learoyd not having done one to read, Dennison told him he
would borrow yours. I heard you tell Ward that it was just like your
luck to have written an essay when you wouldn't be able to read it, and
Dennison must have heard you say the same thing."

"Do you mean that Learoyd had been reading out my stuff two or three
hours before I went to Edwardes?" I asked, for port always makes my
head feel stuffy however little I drink, and I wanted everything put
quite clearly before me.

"I should say so," Murray replied.

My next remarks do not matter, but as soon as I had passed the
explosive state I said, "That all comes from altering my style, and if
I hadn't Edwardes must have known that it was my essay."

"Confound your style," Foster replied, "it seems to me that this is
likely to land you in a very fair row unless we do something at once.
What sort of man is Learoyd?"

"I hardly knew him until this term, and when I didn't know him I rather
liked him, but he has been about a lot with Dennison, and seems to be
going to the bad as hard as he can be pushed," I answered.

"That's true enough," Murray said; "Learoyd was one of the nicest men
up here until this term, and then Dennison took a fancy to him and the
idiot has chucked up working and spends his time trying to be a blood.
I know his people, and have tried all I know to persuade him that he
will never make a successful blood--he isn't made for one--but I have
done no good. Marten isn't in it with Learoyd for rows with Edwardes,
and the worst of it is that if his exhibition was taken away it would
be serious. His people are most frightfully hard up."

"That makes the whole thing a thousand times more complicated," I
replied, "I can't give a man away who is in a hole already. I had
better sit still and see what happens."

"I should think you had better go and see Learoyd," Foster said, "he
can't be in a bigger hole than you are." He got up to go, and I said
that I should wire to my people in the morning and tell them he had got
his blue, but he told me that they knew already, and asked me if I had
heard that Nina was coming up during the next week to see the last
nights of the eights.

"I had a letter from her last night," he continued, "and she said that
Mrs. Marten was going to write to you."