"

"Without doubt Riddell, as far as character goes, is the best boy you
could choose. I'm not quite sure, though, whether he has sufficient
force."

"But, as you say, his force answers to his difficulties. At any rate I
am disposed to try him. A few weeks will show how he gets on. I have
not much fear myself."

And so the head master and his lieutenant separated.

Little dreaming of the changes in store for them, Silk and Gilks were
sitting together in the study of the latter, furtively consuming cigar-
ends and looking decidedly glum as they conversed together in low and
mysterious and not very amicable tones.

"Think he'll do it?" said Silk.

"He had a letter from home this morning," replied Gilks, "I know,
because he sat next to me at breakfast while he was reading it."

"Did you see what it said," inquired Silk, as naturally as if looking
over another fellow's letters were an ordinary proceeding.

"No, but it was from his brother, and it had a post-office order in it."

"It had? that's lucky. How much was it for?"

"I couldn't see," said Gilks.

"Where is he now?" asked Silk, after a pause.

"I don't know. Probably in his Holiness's study--or, no, it's library
night--he'll be there."

"What a nuisance that library is. The young beggar's always pottering
about there," said Silk. "Think he'll look us up before bedtime?"

"Don't know," said Gilks.

"You'd better know," said Silk. "He must come, and you'd better see he
does."

This last was spoken in a somewhat menacing voice, and Gilks sulkily
replied, "What are you in such a hurry to-night for? The morning will
do, won't it?"

"No," said Silk, "it won't, there; and if it did, I choose to see him
to-night."

"I don't know what makes you so precious disagreeable," growled Gilks.
"I don't want to be ordered about by you, I can tell you."

Silk sneered. "I'm under great obligations to you, I know," he said.

"Well," said Gilks, who winced visibly under the satire, "however could
I help it? It wasn't my fault, I tell you. I'm awfully sorry you lost
on the race, but--"

"But you'd better look alive and do what I tell you," said Silk,
viciously.

It was curious, to say the least of it, that in so short a time the
Welcher should have so completely got the upper hand of his confederate
that the latter departed meekly without another word on his errand.

He found Wyndham, as he had expected, in the library, busy getting
together the