“No, not yet,” said Reggie, with the air of a prophet, “the time is not ripe; but the Gumshoe, like Fate, will take a fall out of you in the hour of your pride. Beware.” “Bosh!” said Tony, “I’m going to forget it.” And he fell to work. CHAPTER XV TONY PLAYS THE PART OF A GUARDIAN ANGEL Mr. Roylston put his policy with regard to Tony into rigorous effect. From that day, except when it was obviously necessary to speak with them about their classroom work, he ignored Deering and his friends. He treated them with an icy courtesy that was far more effective in subduing their high spirits than his sarcasm had ever been. Lawrence and Wilson, particularly the latter, were restive under the process, and often threatened, though they never attempted, open rebellion. Tony, on the other hand, was more sensitive to this peculiar method of revenge, and it was probably due to his recognition of this sensitiveness that Mr. Roylston had adopted it. Deering knew that he had been guilty of ungentlemanly conduct and he was not happy so long as his whole-hearted apology was not accepted in the spirit in which it was given. But there seemed no way in which he could improve the situation. He tried to prove his sincerity by doing specially good work in Mr. Roylston’s class, but no word of commendation ever fell from the master’s lips. In truth Mr. Roylston had been wounded more deeply than he had ever been before in a long career that had been marked, too, by much open hostility. But unfortunately he was not the type that could perceive that his difficulties largely lay in his own fundamental lack of sympathy with boy nature; and, resenting what he felt was the boys’ unjust attitude toward him, he had not it in his soul then to forgive such an offense as Tony had been guilty of. As he looked back over their four or five years at Deal, the incident of _The Spectacle_ seemed to him but the culmination of a long series of systematic attempts on the part of that particular “crowd” to belittle and annoy him. That the Head had practically required him to give up the gating penalty, that he had perhaps a lurking feeling that that penalty had been unjustly imposed, added to the bitterness he felt for our young friends.