e to be. He was the school's crack athlete, the president
of the Sixth Form, the chairman of the Student Council, the president of
the Y. M. C. A. He was the One Great Hero of the boys, and the
Headmaster himself consulted him whenever he had a knotty problem of
boy-nature to solve. Before Dick had been at school a week, he knew that
he would rather find favor with "Colonel" Burton than see his name in
gold letters in the schoolroom, or, for that matter, on the Common Room
tablets, where the athletic records are kept. "The Colonel" was rather
used to adoration, and, being human, liked it. But he was no more
attentive to this particular adorer than to any one else, which
intensified Dick Harrington's "case."

* * * * *

Dick did not study much French on that morning in late October. For
suddenly a new, insidious question jumped into the forefront of his
thoughts: Why had he blurted out everything to Mr. Beaver? _Why hadn't
he just lied?_

That question thrust at the very roots of life, and Dick Harrington knew
it. He went cold and hot by turns. Somehow it had never occurred to him
to lie. He did not know why. It was possibly because his father was such
a shining figure of truthfulness personified. He remembered something he
had overheard his mother say to his father a long time ago--"I never
realized until I married you that it is really awful to lie."

Was it really so awful? A lie in time certainly simplified life a lot.
And as long as it did not hurt anybody else--what was really the
difference? A goody-goody Sunday-school teacher had told him, when he
was five, that the lightning would smite him if he told a lie. Whereupon
he had told a lie deliberately during the course of the next
thunderstorm to test Mr. Goody-Goody's veracity, and proved _him_ a
liar, first thing.

Staring at French irregular verbs, Dick clenched his hands, trying to
figure it all out. Suddenly, forgetting where he was, he pounded the
desk-top with his left fist. Then he gave a yowl which rang through the
schoolroom, providing exhilarating diversion to two hundred lifted
heads. For in his cogitations his right hand had clutched the edge of
the desk on which the top closed.

He explained the accident to Mr. Watrous, who proved skeptical, though
the Spy was forced to admit that the hand looked red enough to hurt.

The schoolroom settled again into quiet. The excitement, from start to
finish, had covered about