rom the account we gave him he said that it could not have gone off
more successfully. "If you think Thornton mad when you know that he
isn't, there is no reason for Dennison to change his mind. Besides,
these men are quite certain that he is cracked, and as long as we are
careful they won't suspect anything."

"We shall have to be most tremendously careful," Jack said, and he
seemed to find the prospect oppressive.

"I'll manage Thornton," Murray continued, "and what you men have got to
do is to get asked to this dinner. We shall have to take some others
into this."

We sat down and chose several men who disliked the Dennison gang, and
who could be trusted not to give our scheme away by talking about it,
and during the next few days we had to work hard. Dennison and
Lambert, however, were so confident that this dinner was going to be
the finest rag ever held in Oxford that they did not mind who came to
it. Collier got several invitations for us, because he had a nice
solid way of sitting down in a man's rooms and waiting until he was
given what he wanted; but apart from Jack it was not difficult for us
to get to The Sceptre, and at last even Jack was invited. Murray said
that his part was to prepare Thornton, and he refused to go to the
dinner, because Dennison might wonder why he wanted to be there. I
thought that Murray carried caution to extremes.

I should think that there were nearly forty men at this function; but
the only guest was Thornton, so he began by scoring something. It was
an elaborate affair; Dennison as Secretary of the Hedonists, and two or
three men who called themselves Ex-Presidents, wore enormous badges,
and Thornton's shirt was covered with orders and decorations which were
supposed to have been worn by eighty-eight consecutive Presidents. How
any one who was sane could possibly consent to be made such a fool
puzzled me altogether, and it required all Jack's assurances to make me
believe that we should not be scored off all along the line.

After the dinner was finished Dennison got up to introduce the
President of the year, but all he did was to give a short biography of
Thornton, which for impudence was simply terrific. Everything had gone
so well up to then that I suppose he could not keep himself in hand any
longer; but as he was bounder enough to pull Thornton's people into his
speech, he succeeded in disgusting several men who had been helping him
in the rag. He finished up