claret and
champagne."

Bertie looked out of the window. "This is the finest day there's been,"
said he. Then he looked at his watch. It was twenty-five minutes before
Oscar. Then he looked Billy hard in the eye. "Have you any sand?" he
inquired.

It was a challenge to Billy's manhood. "Sand!" he yelled, sitting up.

Both of them in an instant had left the table and bounded out of the
house. "I'll meet you at Pike's," said Billy to Bertie. "Make him give
us the black gelding."

"Might as well bring our notes along," Bertie called after his rushing
friend; "and get John to tell you the road."

To see their haste, as the two fled in opposite directions upon
their errands, you would have supposed them under some crying call of
obligation, or else to be escaping from justice.

Twenty minutes later they were seated behind the black gelding and
bound on their journey in search of the bird-in-Hand. Their notes in
Philosophy 4 were stowed under the buggy-seat.

"Did Oscar see you?" Bertie inquired.

"Not he," cried Billy, joyously.

"Oscar will wonder," said Bertie; and he gave the black gelding a
triumphant touch with the whip.

You see, it was Oscar that had made them run go; or, rather, it was
Duty and Fate walking in Oscar's displeasing likeness. Nothing easier,
nothing more reasonable, than to see the tutor and tell him they should
not need him to-day. But that would have spoiled everything. They did
not know it, but deep in their childlike hearts was a delicious sense
that in thus unaccountably disappearing they had won a great game, had
got away ahead of Duty and Fate. After all it did bear some resemblance
to an escape from justice. .

Could he have known this, Oscar would have felt more superior than ever.
Punctually at the hour agreed, ten o'clock he rapped at Billy's door and
stood waiting, his leather wallet of notes nipped safe between elbow and
ribs. Then he knocked again. Then he tried the door, and as it was open,
he walked deferentially into the sitting room. Sonorous snores came from
one of the bedrooms. Oscar peered in and saw John; but he saw no Billy
in the other bed. Then, always deferential, he sat down in the sitting
room and watched a couple of prettily striped coats hanging in a
half-open closet.

At that moment the black gelding was flirtatiously crossing the
drawbridge over the Charles on the Allston Road. The gelding knew the
clank of those suspending chains and the slight unsteadin