"I'll do my best, sir," said Gus, in conclusion; "and if they stone me off the Acres----" "I'll bury my reputation as a prophet under the missiles." In one thing Todd was certainly right. When he found Hargon's _v_. Sharpe's pitch and told the assembled twenty-two--rather diffidently, I must own--that he was the deputy referee, they did gasp. "Show us your whistle, Gus," said Higgins, Hargon's captain, doubtfully. Gus held it up, with a genial and childlike smile. "Got the rules in your pocket, too, I suppose." "I have," said Todd--"for reference. But I know _now_, Higgins, that goal-keepers cannot take more than two steps with the ball, and----" Sharpe's lot guffawed at Todd's neat little thrust at Higgins's little failing as a goal-keeper. "But don't you worry, Hig; I'll see you through all right. Three-quarter each way, I suppose?" Todd gave his whole mind to the refereeing, and soon warmed to business. He found that there was heaps more fun in it than he had bargained for, and as he was a sharp, quick, and clever youth he came out of the ordeal with flying colours. He made mistakes, naturally, but momentous issues depended on none of them, and he felt he had not done so badly when Higgins, at half-time, spoke to him as one in authority to another. But Palmer, the captain of Sharpe's lot--the beaten side--put the coping stone to a pleasant afternoon by asking Gus to referee for them against Merishall's. Gus walked off the field a happy man. From that afternoon Todd had no excuse for loafing away any halfer. His services as referee were in demand, not merely as a matter of utility, but of preference. Taylor, who had watched rather anxiously Todd's progress, smiled easily at the success of his understudy. "I say," said Bourne to me, "what's come over Todd? Blessed if that usual ass didn't handle the Fifth _v_. Sixth to-day simply beautifully. When you're lynched, Gus will fill your shoes completely. Talks so-so, too. Who's improving him?" I acted on Phil's advice, and Todd and I parcelled out the outstanding fixtures between us. Then Todd became one of the best-known fellows in the school, and strolled up the hill with Worcester, Acton, Vercoe, and other heroes as to the manner born. The old, lazy, shallow, shifty, shiftless Gus was drifting into the background every day. Then Todd gave us a final shock. I was hurrying down the High when a constable asked me if I could tell him "where a young gentleman named Todd lived." "I'm passing by his house," said I, more than a trifle puzzled as to what the police might want with Gus. "Hope it isn't house-breaking, constable?" "No, sir," said he, laughing. "It is a matter of ice-breakin'." I expect I looked mystified. "Mr. Todd, sir, fished out of the water just below the Low Locks a common ordinary drunk, Robins--a bargee. That was yesterday afternoon, and this morning the superintendent sends me to see how he is." I looked more blankly ignorant than before.