Mulberry was nearing the nearer meadow, still waving and ranting as he came. Chips said he knew he was right, and it was a shame not to meet the fellow half-way; there might have been some accident in the wood. Chips had actually mounted the lowest of the rails against which they had been leaning, and so far Jan had made no further protest, when the drunkard halted in the golden meadow, snatched off his battered hat, and bowed so low that he nearly fell over on his infamous nose. Then he turned his back on them, and retreated rapidly to the wood, with only an occasional stumble in his hurried stride. “Come on,” said Jan with a swing of the shoulder. “I never could bear the sight of that brute. He’s spoilt the view.” In a minute the boys were out of the green lane, and back upon the hilly road, one in the grip of a double memory, the other puzzling over what had just occurred. “I can’t make out what he meant by it, can you, Jan? It was as though he thought he knew us, and then found he didn’t.” Jan came back to the present to consider this explanation. He not only agreed with it, but he carried it a step further on his own account. “You’ve hit it! He took us for two other fellows in the school.” “In the school? I hadn’t thought of that.” “Who else about here wears a topper on Sundays, except you Pollies?[1] Besides, he came near enough to see my school cap.” “But what fellows in the school would have anything to do with a creature like that?” “I don’t know,” said Jan. “We’re not all nobility and gentry; there’s some might get him to do some dirty work or other for them. It might be a bet, or it might be a bit of poaching, for all you know.” “That doesn’t sound like a præpostor,” said Chips, speaking up for the Upper Sixth like a man after old Thrale’s heart. “You never know,” said Jan. The discussion was not prolonged. It was interrupted, first by a rising duet of invisible steps, and then by the apparition of Evan Devereux and his friend Sandham hurrying up the hill with glistening faces. “Talk of the nobility and gentry!” said Chips, when the pair had passed with a greeting too curt to invite a stoppage. But Jan’s chance phrase was not the only coincidence. The encounter had occurred at the very corner where the same four fellows had met by similar accident on the last Sunday of last term. Moreover Evan, like Chips, was wearing the præpostor’s Sunday hat, while Sandham and Jan were in their ordinary school caps. ----- Footnote 1: Præpostors. CHAPTER XXII THE OLD BOYS’ MATCH