And despite his companions’ adjurations Kit clambered off over the rocks and started out in the direction indicated by Carroll’s and Chapin’s footsteps in the snow. The boys got safely back without being detected, but Kit was a quarter of an hour late, and created a sad disturbance when he entered in the midst of Mr. Roylston’s Third Latin recitation. “The incorrigible Wilson,” remarked Mr. Roylston, without turning his beady black eyes in his direction, “will kindly take a pensum of one hundred lines for being late and disturbing the class.” “Very well, sir,” said Kit. “Spare me your comments, pray. Continue your recitation, Turner; Book Four, Chapter Fourteen, line twenty. Proceed. Cæsar—” “Oh, yes, sir.... Qui omnibus rebus subito perterriti—” Tack spelled it out painfully, and fell mercilessly upon it, “Who to all quickly having been thoroughly terrified. Et celeritati nostri et discessu suorum.... And with quickness to us both a descent....” Mr. Roylston transfixed the floundering youth with a withering glance, and there was a moment of awful silence. “With quickness to you, I may suggest, Turner,” he said at last in scathing tones, “descent into your seat and a zero in my mark-book.” He turned to Kit. “Wilson, let us see if you can cast light upon the darkness into which Turner has led us.” “I am afraid I can’t, sir.” “No?” murmured the master. “Well, I was not hopeful,” and he quietly recorded a zero in his mark-book. “Now, Deering—” Tony took up the passage, and got through it correctly enough, but not without being harassed by Mr. Roylston’s interruptions and glances of incredulity at his rendering of the Latin. The Latin recitations at Deal under the famous Ebenezer Roylston—he was the editor of an edition of Cicero that was classic in its day—were periods of agony and boredom. But at last this particular recitation came to an end, and immediately afterward, Kit threw his arms about the necks of his two friends, and drew them into a vacant classroom. “Well?” “What’s up?” “Oh, you frabjous kiddos! I tracked ‘em for a mile—’twas a mucker trick, I’ll admit, but I’ve got it in for Chapin. And what do you think, those two blooming jays are playing poker with their crowd in a shanty back of the Third Ridge. If it weren’t for Reggie, I swear I’d peach on Chapin.” “I swear you’d do nothing of the sort,” said Tony. “Well, perhaps not,” assented Kit, temporarily crestfallen. “But I must say that’s a crummy thing of them to do. Fine school spirit, eh!” “Well, we have been skipping bounds pretty regularly this fall, if I remember correctly.” “My dear child,” remarked Kit paternally, “when will you learn wisdom? The Doctor carefully distinguishes between moral offenses and offenses against school discipline. Now, bounds are obviously disciplinary and not moral; hence we are mere wandering angels, while those poker fiends are equally hence of the lower regions.”