Lock-up at last. The little block of ivy-mantled studies became a manufactory of proses and verses, all Latin but Chips’s, and the Greek iambics of others high up in the school, and all but the English effort to be signed by Mr. Heriot after prayers that night or first thing in the morning, to show that the Sabbath had not been broken by secular composition. Nine o’clock and prayers were actually approaching; and yet Jan still sat, or stood about, unmolested in his disorderly study; and yet the heavens had not fallen, or earth trembled with the wrath of Heriot or anybody else. Could it be that for the second time Jan was to be let off by the soft-heartedness of a master who knew enough to hang him? Hardly! Haigh, of all men! Yet he had been most awfully decent about it all; it was a revelation to Jan that there was so much common decency after all in his oldest enemy.... Now he would soon know. Hark at the old harsh bell, rung by Morgan outside the hall, across the quad! Prayers. Jan had scarcely expected to go in to prayers again, and as he went he remembered his first impressions of the function at the beginning of his first term. He remembered the small boy standing sentinel in the flagged passage leading to the green-baize door, and all the fellows armed with hymn-books and chatting merrily in their places at table. That small boy was a big fellow at the Sixth Form table now, and the chat was more animated but less merry than it had seemed to Jan then. Something was in the air already. Could it have leaked out before the sword descended? No; it must be something else. Everybody was eager to tell him about it, as he repeated ancient history by coming in almost last. “Have you heard about Devereux?” “Have you heard, Rutter?” “_Haven’t_ you heard?” His heart missed a beat. “No. What?” “He’s down with measles!” “That all?” exclaimed Jan, tingling with returning animation. If his own downfall had been in vain! “It’s bad enough,” said the big fellow who had stood sentinel four years ago. “They say he must have had them on him when he was in, and the whole thing may make him jolly bad.” “Who says so?” “Morgan; he’s just heard it.” Poverty of detail was eked out by fertile speculation. Jan was hardly listening; he could not help considering how far this new catastrophe would affect himself. Evan was as strong as a horse, and that moreover with the strength which had never been outgrown; besides, he would have his magnificent century to look back upon from his pillow. That was enough to see anybody through anything. And now there would be no fear of mental complication, no question of his coming forward and owning up: for who was going to carry a school scandal into the Sanatorium, even if the school ever learnt the rights?