when the term had
turned the corner, and the Grandcourt match was beginning to loom very
near in the future, "it strikes me you're not doing much good up here.
You're always fooling about with those precious juniors of yours,
instead of sticking to cricket and tennis and your books. Here's young
Aspinall here, ahead of you, by long chalks, in classics, and getting a
break on at tennis that'll puzzle you to pick up unless you wake up.
You can do as you like; only don't blame me if you get stuck among the
louts."

For a time, this friendly advice pulled Dick up in his profitless
career. The dread of being considered a "lout" by your senior is a
motive which appeals forcibly to most boys; and for a week or so Dick
made a feverish show of returning to his outdoor sports, and doing
himself justice.

But the effort died away under the claims of the Den. Den suppers, Den
concerts, Den debates, and Den conclaves always somehow managed to clash
with Templeton work and play; and even Heathcote found it next to
impossible to keep up his batting and his secretarial duties to the
honourable fraternity.

"_I_ shall have to jack it up," said he, one day, dolefully to Dick,
"Pledge always wants me just when things are going on here. Hadn't you
better get some one else?"

"Bosh! Let Pledge get some one else," said Dick, warmly. "What right
has he got to make you fag for him out of school; that's the very thing
we want to stop."

"But I rather like the batting. Cartwright said I was improving."

"Oh, of course; just a dodge to make you stick to it. Don't you let
them gammon you, Georgie. Stick to us, and hang Pledge."

And, of course, Heathcote obeyed, and his cricket suffered; and fellows
who had hopes of him shrugged their shoulders when they saw him rioting
in the Den, and letting another usurp his pads.

Had Dick known the bad turn he was doing his friend he would have
hesitated before requiring him to give up a healthy sport, which, just
then, was one of his chief safeguards against far less healthy
occupations.

The "spider" had not had the fly in his web for five weeks without
casting some light toils around him. Heathcote himself would have said
that Pledge was as inoffensive to-day as he had been on the first day of
the term, and would have angrily scouted the idea that "Junius," or any
one else, had been right in his warnings.

And yet in five weeks Heathcote had begun not to be the nice boy he was.
Not