e the sides settled to games came
through the open window. Winton, like his House-Master, loved fresh air.
Then they heard Paddy Vernon, sub-prefect on duty, calling the roll in
the field and marking defaulters. Winton wrote steadily. King curled
himself up on a desk, hands round knees. One would have said that the
man was gloating over the boy's misfortune, but the boy understood.

'_Dis te minorem quod geris imperas_,' King quoted presently. 'It is
necessary to bear oneself as lower than the local gods--even than
drawing-masters who are precluded from effective retaliation. I _do_
wish you'd tried that mouse-game with me, Pater.'

Winton grinned; then sobered 'It was a cad's trick, sir, to play on Mr.
Lidgett.' He peered forward at the page he was copying.

'Well, "the sin _I_ impute to each frustrate ghost"--' King stopped
himself. 'Why do you goggle like an owl? Hand me the Mantuan and I'll
dictate. No matter. Any rich Virgilian measures will serve. I may
peradventure recall a few.' He began:

'Tu regere imperio populos Romane memento
Hae tibi erunt artes pacisque imponere morem,
Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos.

There you have it all, Winton. Write that out twice and yet once again.'

For the next forty minutes, with never a glance at the book, King paid
out the glorious hexameters (and King could read Latin as though it were
alive), Winton hauling them in and coiling them away behind him as
trimmers in a telegraph-ship's hold coil away deep-sea cable. King broke
from the Aeneid to the Georgics and back again, pausing now and then to
translate some specially loved line or to dwell on the treble-shot
texture of the ancient fabric. He did not allude to the coming interview
with Mullins except at the last, when he said, 'I think at this
juncture, Pater, I need not ask you for the precise significance of
_atqui sciebat quae sibi barbarus tortor_.'

The ungrateful Winton flushed angrily, and King loafed out to take five
o'clock call-over, after which he invited little Hartopp to tea and a
talk on chlorine-gas. Hartopp accepted the challenge like a bantam, and
the two went up to King's study about the same time as Winton returned
to the form-room beneath it to finish his lines.

Then half a dozen of the Second Fifteen, who should have been washing,
strolled in to condole with 'Pater' Winton, whose misfortune and its
consequences were common talk. No one was more sincere than the long,
red-