“Sulky brute!” cried Haigh, with pardonable passion. “I suppose you don’t remember what was to happen if either of you failed to discharge the penalty of your dishonesty last term? But _you_ remember, Carpenter?” “Yes, sir.” “Carpenter, you may go; you’ve taken your punishment in the proper spirit, and I shall not mention your name if I can help it. You, Rutter, will hear more about the matter from Mr. Thrale to-morrow.” “Thank you, sir,” said Jan, breaking silence at last, and without palpable impertinence, but rather with devout sincerity. Mr. Haigh, however, took his aversion by the shoulders and ran him out of the hall in Chips’s wake. Chips was miserable about the whole affair. He made up his mind either to immediate expulsion for his friend, or such public degradation as would bring the extreme penalty about by hardening an already obdurate and perverse heart. The worst of it was that Jan did not treat Chips as a friend in the matter, would not talk about it on the hill or in his study, or explain himself any more than he had done to Mr. Haigh. The one consoling feature of the case was that only the two boys knew anything at all about its latest development; and Chips was not the person to discuss with others that which Jan declined to discuss with him. Next day, however, in his new form, which happened to be taken by the master who had the Lodge, there was no more absent mind than Carpenter’s as second school drew to an end. It was after second school that the day’s delinquents were flogged by the Head Master before the eyes of all and sundry who liked to peer through the diamond panes of his class-room windows. Chips had to pass close by on his way out of school; but there were no spectators looking on outside, no old gentleman playing judge or executioner within. In response to an anxious question Chips was informed, by a youth who addressed him as “my good man,” that even old Thrale didn’t start flogging on the second day of a term. Instead of being relieved by the information, he only felt more depressed, having heard that really serious cases were not taken in this public way at all, but privately in the Head Master’s sanctum. Chips went back to his house full of dire forebodings, and shut himself in his study after looking vainly into Jan’s; and there he was still sitting when Jan’s unmistakable slipshod step brought him to his open door. “Tiger!” he called under his breath; and there was a world of interrogation and anxiety in his voice. “What’s up now?” inquired Jan, coming in with a sort of rough swagger foreign to his habit, though Chips had observed it once or twice in the course of their confidential relations. “That’s what I want to know,” said he. “What has happened? What’s going to happen? When have you got to say it by?” “I’ve said it.” Chips might have been knocked down with a fledgling’s feather. “You’ve said your Aytoun’s Lay to Haigh?” “Without a mistake,” said Jan. “I’ve just finished saying it.”