lier at cricket
that you are at 'footer,' so you can't afford to slack up now."

"I've got private knowledge," said Acton, with a filthy lie, "that I
won't get 'em in any case, so I shall not try."

Dick was considerably upset by this, and Acton's sudden stoppage of
practice after an intense beginning made his lie seem a good imitation
of truth, and gave Worcester food for bitter thoughts against Phil.
Acton worked "the-no-good-to-try" dodge carefully and artistically; he
never actually said his lie openly, or Phil would have nailed it to the
counter, but, like a second Iago, he dropped little barbed insinuations
here, little double-edged sayings there, until Biffenites to a man
believed there would be a repetition of the "footer" cap over again, and
the school generally drifted back to aloofness as far as Phil was
concerned.

Acton laid himself out to be excessively friendly with the monitors, and
just as he entered into their good graces, Phil drifted out of them--in
fact, to be friendly with Acton was the same thing as being cool towards
Bourne. Phil made splendid scores Saturday after Saturday, but the
enthusiasm which his fine play should have called out was wanting.

"Why don't you cheer your captain, Tom?" I overheard a father say to his
young hopeful.

"No fear!" said the frenzied Biffenite. "Bourne is a beast!"

In fact, the only one who seemed to derive any pleasure from Bourne's
prowess in the field was Acton himself. He used to sit near the
flag-staff, and when Phil made his splendid late cut, whose applause was
so generous as his? whose joy so great? Acton's manoeuvres were on the
highest artistic levels, I can assure you, and in the eyes of the
fellows generally, his was a case of persecuted forgiving virtue. Acton,
too, kept in old Corker's good books, and his achievements in the way of
classics made the old master beam upon him with his keen blue eye.

I saw with dismay how persistently unpopular Phil remained, and I heard
the charms of Acton sung daily by monitor after monitor, until I saw
that Acton had captured the whole body bar Phil's own staunch friends,
Baines, Roberts, and Vercoe. And then it dawned upon me that Acton was
making a bid for the captaincy himself, and when I had convinced myself
that this was his object, I felt angrier than I can remember. I
thereupon wrote to Aspinall, gave him a full, true, and particular
account of Acton's campaign against Phil, and asked him to release
m