“I’ve a good mind to set everybody right!” cried Carpenter, worked up to more than he had dreamed of saying, a wild impulse burning in his eyes. “I can’t see you bunked for nothing, when others including me have done all sorts of things to deserve it. Yes, Jan, including me! You think I’ve been so straight! So I was in the beginning; so I am now, if you like, but I’ve not been all the time. Don’t stop me. I won’t be stopped; but that’s about all I’ve got to say. I’ve always wanted you to know. You’re the only fellow in the place I care much for, who cares much for me, though not so much——” “Yes I do, Chips, yes I do! I never thought so much of you as I do this minute.... I don’t say it never crossed my mind.... But don’t you make yourself out worse than you ever were, even to me!” “I don’t want to.... It didn’t go on so long, and it’s all over now.... But I shall get the præpostor’s medal when I leave—unless I’m man enough to refuse it—and you’ve been bunked for standing by a fellow who never would have stood by you!” “That’s where you’re wrong, Chips,” said Jan, gently. “No, I’m not. It’s the other way about.” “You don’t know how Evan’s stood by me all these years.” Carpenter maintained a strange silence—very strange in him, just then especially—a silence that made him ashamed and yet exultant. “_Do_ you know, Chips?” “It depends what you think he’s done.” “I’ll tell you,” said Jan with sudden yet quiet resolution, and a lift of his head as though the peak of a cap had been pulled down too far. “I had a secret when I came here, and Evan knew it but nobody else. It was a big secret—about my people and me too—and if it had come out then I’d have bolted like a rabbit. I know now that it wouldn’t have mattered as much as I thought it would; things about your people, or anything that ever happened anywhere else, don’t hurt or help much in a place like this. It’s what you can do and how you take things that matters here. But I didn’t know that then and I don’t suppose Evan did either. Yet he kept a quiet tongue in his head about everything he did know. And that’s what I owe him—all it meant to me then, and does still in a way—his holding his tongue like that!” Still Chips held his; and now Jan was the prey of doubts which his own voice had silenced. All that the familiar debt had gained by clear statement was counteracted by the stony demeanour of its first auditor. “Did he ever tell you, Chips?” “The very first time I saw him, our very first term!” “Not—not about my father and—the stables—and all that?” “Everything!” Jan threw himself back four years. “Yet when I sounded you at the time——” “I told you the lie of my life!” said Chips. “I couldn’t help myself. But this is the truth!” And Jan took it with the enviable composure which had only deserted him when Evan was being traduced; it was several seconds before he made a sound, still standing there with his back to the bedroom window; and then the sound was very like a chuckle.