d times too
good for the barren, ungrateful, and ill-requited service to which he
had devoted his life--at any rate, looking at it from the unregenerate
and worldly point of view. And, with a consciousness of having said
just the right thing at the right time, Mr Sefton wisely decided to say
no more.

"Think it over, Haviland. Think it over. D'you hear?" and with a
friendly nod of farewell, he went his way.

A few minutes later he was walking along a field-path, his hat on the
back of his head as usual, and swinging his stick. With him was Mr
Williams.

"I've just been talking to that fellow Haviland," he was saying. "Of
course, I didn't tell him so, but Nick has made a blunder this time.
He's piled it on to him too thick."

The Doctor's _sobriquet_, you see, had got among the assistant masters.
It was short and handy, and so among themselves they used it--some of
them, at any rate.

"I think he's been most infernally rough on him, if you ask me," replied
Mr Williams, who, by the way, was not in orders, but an athletic Oxford
graduate of sporting tastes, and who was generally to be met when off
the grounds surrounded by three or four dogs, and puffing at a
briar-root pipe. This he was even now engaged in relighting. "One
would think it'd be enough to kick the poor devil out of his prefectship
without gating him for the rest of the term into the bargain. I
promptly let him off the lines I'd given him when I heard of it."

"That's just my opinion, Williams. And it's the gating that's making
him desperate. And he is getting desperate, too. I shouldn't be
surprised if he did something reckless."

"Then he'll get the chuck. That'll be the last straw. Why has Nick got
such a down on him, eh, Sefton?"

"I don't know, mind, but perhaps I can guess," said the other,
enigmatically. "But look here, Williams. Supposing we put in a word
for him to Nick. Get him to take off the fellow's gates, at any rate?
Eh? Clay would join, and so would Jackson, in feet we all would."

"That'd make it worse. Nick would think we were all in league against
him. He isn't going back one jot or tittle on his infallible judgment,
so don't you believe it. We'd get properly snubbed for our pains."

"Well, I'm going to tackle him, anyhow. I'm not afraid of Nick for all
his absurd pomposity," rejoined Mr Sefton, with something like a snort
of defiance, and his nose in the air. He meant it, too. Yet, although
the above exp