you further about their ethics."

"And may I ask," said Basil gloomily, "what it is that you propose to
do?"

"I propose, first of all," said Rupert, "to get into this house;
secondly, to have a look at these nice young Oxford men; thirdly, to
knock them down, bind them, gag them, and search the house."

Basil stared indignantly for a few minutes. Then he was shaken for an
instant with one of his sudden laughs.

"Poor little boys," he said. "But it almost serves them right for
holding such silly views, after all," and he quaked again with amusement
"there's something confoundedly Darwinian about it."

"I suppose you mean to help us?" said Rupert.

"Oh, yes, I'll be in it," answered Basil, "if it's only to prevent your
doing the poor chaps any harm."

He was standing in the rear of our little procession, looking
indifferent and sometimes even sulky, but somehow the instant the door
opened he stepped first into the hall, glowing with urbanity.

"So sorry to haunt you like this," he said. "I met two friends outside
who very much want to know you. May I bring them in?"

"Delighted, of course," said a young voice, the unmistakable voice
of the Isis, and I realized that the door had been opened, not by the
decorous little servant girl, but by one of our hosts in person. He was
a short, but shapely young gentleman, with curly dark hair and a
square, snub-nosed face. He wore slippers and a sort of blazer of some
incredible college purple.

"This way," he said; "mind the steps by the staircase. This house is
more crooked and old-fashioned than you would think from its snobbish
exterior. There are quite a lot of odd corners in the place really."

"That," said Rupert, with a savage smile, "I can quite believe."

We were by this time in the study or back parlour, used by the young
inhabitants as a sitting-room, an apartment littered with magazines
and books ranging from Dante to detective stories. The other youth, who
stood with his back to the fire smoking a corncob, was big and burly,
with dead brown hair brushed forward and a Norfolk jacket. He was that
particular type of man whose every feature and action is heavy and
clumsy, and yet who is, you would say, rather exceptionally a gentleman.

"Any more arguments?" he said, when introductions had been effected. "I
must say, Mr Grant, you were rather severe upon eminent men of science
such as we. I've half a mind to chuck my D.Sc. and turn minor poet."

"Bosh," ans