For one moment his father merely looked dazed. But as he began to recover Roe slowly backed towards the wall. Then he found himself staring helplessly towards his father’s table, absolutely fascinated by the fixed glare of his wide eyes shining with concentrated anger from behind their spectacles, just as a rabbit is frozen still by the cold eyes of a snake. His father did not speak. He just subsided slowly into his chair and his eyes never left his son’s unhappy countenance. He was looking him through and through, and Roe could see that he was at the same time turning it all over in his mind and looking at this outburst by a fettered school from every possible angle. Nothing was going to escape consideration. The probability was that he was no more vexed at the open lawlessness of such a match than at the astounding fact that the officially appointed captain of football at the school had been left out of the team by those who had selected it. He was very clearly taken aback. At last his lips jerked open and he spoke, but no muscle of his body moved, and his eyes never for one instant shifted from their close examination of his son. His voice was ominously hard and dry. He said: “If you knew that this was going to happen why did you not mention it in time for me to stop it?” Roe moved a pace nearer to the wall. “Coles said——” he began. “Coles?” snapped the Head. “What part has he in this? Has he gone with the team? Is Coles playing for the school?” Roe tried to steady himself before he spoke. He answered after a moment’s pause: “He’s playing. But he had a reason. He thought that if he refused suspicion would settle upon him and spoil our chance of doing any good later on. There was another thing too. He had made a plan.” “What plan?” The Head stood up. “Coles seems to imagine,” he exclaimed, “that I wish him to come to my support with underhand plots. I require no such help whatever. His suggestions of late have been an open insult to the power of my authority. You will tell Coles that whatever I require of him will be obtained by exacting his obedience to my instructions and not by lending my ear to subterfuges. Coles utterly misconceives his position. You will tell him that I am exceedingly angry to find that to advance some plot of his own he agreed to disobey my orders.” Roe shivered miserably.