Meanwhile Gerald was leading a dozen or so scantily attired youths over the cross-country course, plugging up the slippery hillsides and splashing through puddles, with the rain soaking their running clothes and squish-squashing in their spiked shoes, and all for the glory of Yardley. And, although no one knew it, far out on the golf links, a solitary figure in the rain-swept landscape, George Kirk was tramping doggedly along in the wake of a wee white ball. The golfing days were growing fewer and fewer and, although it would be a good six months before he could lead his warriors against Broadwood again, he must miss no chance to prepare for a victory. And this, too, was for the glory of Yardley. By supper time the drizzle had turned to a driving rain that beat against the front windows of the halls and filled the walks with unexpected puddles into which you walked unseeingly. It was what The Duke, sprinting back from the library after supper――even The Duke had to look up a reference occasionally――termed to himself “a dark, dank, drooly nicht.” He reached the entrance to Clarke out of breath and somewhat damp, but his spirits were not affected. It took more than that to affect them. Even the fact that authority in the person of one Edmund Gaddis, instructor in English, familiarly known as “Old Tige,” had decreed that The Duke should hand in a theme before Saturday noon, and that Saturday noon was less than seventeen hours away, cast no spell of gloom over his gayety. When, having reached the head of the first flight, he descried Adler coming along the corridor, he immediately stationed himself against the newel post, clapped a hand to an imaginary sword hilt and scowled silently at the approaching figure. Adler, sighting his foe at the same moment, placed a quick hand on his own weapon and, hugging the further wall, advanced cautiously, with an insolent expression. No word was spoken. Eyeing each other intently, haughtily, they met and passed. The weapons were not drawn. Adler, circling at a safe distance, reached the stairs and, with a last malevolent glare, which was met and returned, passed from sight. Whereupon The Duke dropped his hand from his sword hilt and proceeded upstairs, three steps at a time. Just why the two went through this procedure they did not know, but they always did, wherever and whenever they met. Doubtless it added spice to life. Cotton was writing at the study table when The Duke flung open the door of Number 47. At sight of his roommate Cotton quickly turned the written sheet face downward and drew a blotter half over it, afterward pretending to trace figures on the blotter with his pen. The Duke observed him disgustedly. “Oh, chuck the mystery, Cotton! I don’t want to see what you’re writing. Every time anyone comes around you you hide something like a silly conspirator. Why the dickens don’t you write something you aren’t ashamed of, eh?”