“Accumulations, so that blasted Head told me. Throwing a snowball finished it.” “Oh, you infernal ass,” said Maddox. “You jolly well deserved it.” At that the devil, no less, entered into David. “Anyhow, I never deserved being expelled,” he said very evilly. Frank looked at him a moment; then, without a word, he left the room. For a few seconds David was not in the least sorry for that speech. He was smarting himself, and if all Frank had to say was that he deserved it, he was glad to have made Frank smart too. . . . And then with a sudden sense of sick regret, he remembered who Frank was, and all that Frank had been to him. And on the moment he was out of his study, and off down the passage to Frank’s. He went in without knocking. “I say, I’m a damnable chap,” he said. “I’m frightfully sorry. I don’t know if you can forgive me.” He put out a rather timid hand. Instantly it was clasped and held. “I didn’t mean it,” he said. “I felt mad.” “David, old chap,” said Frank. They stood there for a minute in silence, for really there was nothing more to be said. Then David smiled. “I think I’d better not make an ass of myself any more,” he said. “Beastly good idea,” said Frank. CHAPTER XII David was sitting on the steps in front of the cricket-pavilion in school-field, with a pad on each leg and a glove on each hand, and an icy lump of nervous fear inside his canvas shirt to take the place of a heart. But nobody paid the least attention to him, or gave him a single word of encouragement, or cared at all for his panic-stricken condition, because everybody was utterly absorbed in what was going on at the wickets. The whole school and the whole staff were there watching the end of the final tie in house-matches in absolute tense silence, except when a run was scored, or a smart piece of fielding prevented one being scored. Then a roar went up from all round the ground, cut off again suddenly, as if a hand had been placed over all the mouths of some many-throated beast, as the bowler received the ball again. During the pause between overs a buzz of talk rose as if the cork had been taken out of a bottle where sonorous bees were confined; this talk was silenced as the next over began.