Fortunately at this point half-past twelve struck, and the bell rang for the end of morning school. The situation was saved, and the tension relaxed. 'You may go, Lorimer,' said the Head, 'I will send for you later.' He swept out of the room, and Lorimer raced over to the House to inform Pringle that the Headmaster had run suddenly mad, and should by rights be equipped with a strait-waistcoat. 'You never saw such a man,' he said, 'hauled me out of school in the middle of a Plautus lesson, dumps me down in a chair, and then asks me if I've read some weird sporting novel or other.' 'Sporting novel! My dear man!' 'Well, it sounded like it from the title.' 'The title. Oh!' 'What's up?' Pringle had leaped to his feet as if he had suddenly discovered that he was sitting on something red-hot. His normal air of superior calm had vanished. He was breathless with excitement. A sudden idea had struck him with the force of a bullet. 'What was the title he asked you if you'd read the book of?' he demanded incoherently. '_The Derby Winner_.' Pringle sat down again, relieved. 'Oh. Are you certain?' 'No, of course it wasn't that. I was only ragging. The real title was _The Dark Horse_. Hullo, what's up now? Have you got 'em too?' 'What's up? I'll tell you. We're done for. Absolutely pipped. That's what's the matter.' 'Hang it, man, do give us a chance. Why can't you explain, instead of sitting there talking like that? Why are we done? What have we done, anyway?' 'The poem, of course, the prize poem. I forgot, I never told you. I hadn't time to write anything of my own, so I cribbed it straight out of a book called _The Dark Horse_. Now do you see?' Lorimer saw. He grasped the whole unpainted beauty of the situation in a flash, and for some moments it rendered him totally unfit for intellectual conversation. When he did speak his observation was brief, but it teemed with condensed meaning. It was the conversational parallel to the ox in the tea-cup. 'My aunt!' he said. 'There'll be a row about this,' said Pringle. 'What am I to say when he has me in this afternoon? He said he would.' 'Let the whole thing out. No good trying to hush it up. He may let us down easy if you're honest about it.' It relieved Lorimer to hear Pringle talk about 'us'. It meant that he was not to be left to bear the assault alone. Which, considering that the whole trouble was, strictly speaking, Pringle's fault, was only just. 'But how am I to explain? I can't reel off a long yarn all about how you did it all, and so on. It would be too low.' 'I know,' said Pringle, 'I've got it. Look here, on your way to the Old Man's room you pass the Remove door. Well, when you pass, drop some money. I'll be certain to hear it, as I sit next the door. And then I'll ask to leave the room, and we'll go up together.' 'Good man, Pringle, you're a genius. Thanks, awfully.' But as it happened, this crafty scheme was not found necessary. The blow did not fall till after lock-up.