rsyth. "I will talk it over with my people
when I go home at Easter, and will let you know as quickly as I can."

"That is settled then. Oh, we won't say good-bye yet awhile."

"It is a strange thing," said Kavanagh, who, having finished his tea,
had tilted his chair so that his back leaned against the wall, while his
feet rested on another chair, less for the comfort of the position, than
to afford him an opportunity of admiring his well-cut trousers, his
striped socks, and his dandy shoes; "it is a strange thing that there
should only be one career fit for a fellow to follow, and that it should
be impossible for a fellow to get into it."

"It sounds rather like a sweeping assertion that, doesn't it?" observed
Strachan, who was helping himself to marmalade.

"That is because you do not grasp the meaning which I attach to the word
_fellow_. I do not allude to the ordinary mortal, who might be a
lawyer, or a parson, or a painter, or fiddler, or anything, and who
might get any number of marks in an examination. I mean by fellows, the
higher order of beings, who are only worth consideration; I do not
define them, because that is impossible; you must know, or you mustn't
know, according to your belonging to them or not. Anyhow, there they
are, and everything and everybody else is only of value so far as he,
she, or it is conducive to their comfort and well-being. For them the
army is the only fit profession, and only a few of them can get enough
marks to enter it."

"Am I one of these extra superfines?" asked Strachan.

"You may be, perhaps, if you don't eat too much marmalade."

"Come, you are pretty fond of jam yourself, Kavanagh," cried Forsyth.

"Well, yes; we all have our little weaknesses."

"That reminds me," said Strachan, turning round and poking the fire.
"Our school career is drawing to a close, and I have never made my
confession. I committed a crime last November which I have never owned,
which no one suspects, but which weighs, whenever I think of it, on my
conscience."

"Unburden," said Kavanagh.

"Well, then, you may remember that the weather was very mild up to the
seventh of the month."

"Don't; but grant it. Go ahead."

"On the eighth of November it grew suddenly colder, and I got out my
winter things, and in the afternoon I changed. Having done so, I put my
pencil in the right-hand waistcoat pocket. There was something round
and hard there--a lozenge? No, a shilling, which had r