Finch was lying on his couch, laid low by an intense headache. The pain was so severe that he could scarcely respond to his hero’s greeting. “Thanks,” he said weakly. He tried to get up, but Tony, quick as a flash, pushed him gently back. “There, keep quiet! I didn’t know you had another headache. I’m awfully sorry, old chap. Rotten things, those headaches of yours.” Finch smiled, and writhed with pain. “It’ll be all right, I guess.” Tony sat down on the edge of the bed. “Why don’t you go up to the Infirmary?... Can I get you anything?” “No ... thank you,” Jake answered. “I’ll sleep it off; it’s the only way. Don’t bother. If you don’t mind, I’ll make out better alone.” “Mind? No. Only I’m blamed sorry.” “Leave the _Spectacle_, will you?” “All right, I’ll stick it here on your desk. Read it in the morning. Don’t forget to call me if you want anything. Does Bill know you’re sick?” “Yes—he’s been in.” “Well, good-night, Jake. Tell me what you think of it to-morrow.” When Tony had gone out, Finch tried to get up and read the paper, but the pain pulled him back on his bed again, and he lay there in misery till sleep came at last and released him. The next morning, with the hurry of breakfast and chapel, he had no opportunity of reading the squib until First Study, which, as Mr. Roylston held it, usually was _study_ and not the loafing, letter-writing, novel-reading period it occasionally was under laxer masters. Finch, who had hard work to keep the place he was determined to maintain in the school, rarely wasted his study periods, so that he was ignorant of the various devices whereby the lazy gave the pretense of studying when they were doing other things. At the risk of an imperfect Greek lesson—for he could restrain his curiosity no longer, he took out Tony’s manuscript soon after First Study began, and was eagerly and hastily perusing it. Deering’s obvious exaggerations, and even more, though he could not distinguish them, Jimmie’s finer touches, amused him greatly. For the first time he was really smiling broadly in the schoolroom. The master, so long the traditional _bête noir_ and subject of caricature, took form in his imagination, and Mr. Roylston, whom Finch feared with an abject fear, for once seemed to him to be amusing. Suddenly, to his intense horror, Gumshoe Ebenezer stood before him, not in the spirit but in the flesh, and his long slim bony fingers closed about Tony’s manuscript as he removed it quickly from Finch’s nerveless grasp. “I will relieve you of that extraneous matter,” he observed sharply. “It is expected that boys shall spend this period in study, not in reading amusing letters.” “It—it isn’t a l—letter,” gasped Finch. “It does not in the least matter whether it is a letter or not,” replied Mr. Roylston. “It is very evident that it has no bearing whatever upon Xenophon’s _Anabasis_ or the Greek Grammar.”