“Is this yours?” he asked. “Yes,” said Bags, instantly. “Well, I shall confiscate it, and I shall whack you. Better come and be whacked now, and get it over. But it’s a damned bad plan to use cribs, Bags. When you get into the fifth form, you’ll find you’re no end of a way behind fellows who’ve worked their way up, instead of cribbing their way up. Got any more of these silly things? Let’s have them all. I don’t want to search your study, you know. I would much sooner you gave me them, all of them, and told me there aren’t any more. Word of honour, you know.” Bags thought feverishly a moment. “There are several more,” he said. “Right; let’s have them.” Bags got down from the table where he was sitting, feeling rather limp physically, but quite resolved to see this through. Meantime, unfortunately, Maddox had opened the volume of Bohn’s Thucydides, with the idle habit of the book-lover, and turned to the title-page. “And you wrote David’s name in it, though it was yours?” he asked. Here was an awful complication. And what an unspeakable ass was David, so thought Bags, to write his name in a crib. He remembered his doing it now, in Greek characters. He quite intensely wished he had not said it was his own. But that he proposed to stick to, and if Maddox chose he might think him guilty of the unutterable meanness of owning a crib and writing a pal’s name in it. “Yes, I wrote Blaize’s name in it,” he said, “in Greek.” But he did not say it particularly well. Or Maddox was confoundedly sharp. Probably both. “Oh, that’s a lie, isn’t it?” he said. Bags was between the devil and the deep sea, and any other uncomfortable neighbours that are possible to a boy. He had been quite prepared to take a whacking on David’s behalf, and, though the flesh was weak, his spirit really embraced the opportunity. But now, just as likely as not, he was going to take a whacking on his own behalf, without getting David off. It was all pretty bad, but how could he have foreseen that Maddox would look at the title-page, or have forgotten that David had been such a juggins as to write his name there? So, being landed in this awkward place, he made up his mind to stop there. “No, that’s all right,” he said. “I wrote Blaize’s name there.” Maddox looked at him, so it seemed to Bags, with a certain respectful sympathy. “And in David’s handwriting?” he asked. “Makings of a forger. And are you doing Thucydides this half? David is, I know, because I’ve often given him construes. But you’re in the other remove, aren’t you?” It was no use lying about this. Bags surrendered and told the truth. “Yes, in Remove B,” he said. “Then you can’t be doing Thucydides, because they always do different books. Oh, cave in! Out with it!” “Well, then, it’s Blaize’s crib,” said the unsuccessful Bags. “So I knew. Why did you say it was yours?” “I don’t know,” said Bags. “Think then.” Bags threw his sucked orange, the third of them, into the waste-paper basket.