Forty-eight hours passed without a trace of George Lawton, and they were the saddest two days the First Latin ever knew. "All the life went out of the school with Snipe," was the way Joy expressed it, though no fellow in the whole establishment was credited with more mischief than the speaker. Lessons and recitations, despite the best efforts of Halsey and Beach and the lamb-like bleatings of Meeker, seemed to fall flat. Even the leaders went through with them in a style more dead than alive, and at every sound upon the stairs all eyes would be fixed on the doorway and matters would come to a stand-still in the class. It was plain that every boy was thinking only of the missing comrade and praying for tidings of him. The masters, too, were weighed down with apprehension--or something. Othello's dark face wore a yellowish hue, and Meeker looked the picture of nervous woe. His complexion, always pallid, now seemed ashen, and he started at every sudden sound. Thursday went by without a word of any kind of news. The class huddled together at recess, taking no notice whatever of Hoover, who skulked away for his smoke, followed by many unloving eyes but without audible comment, for Shorty had conveyed Pop's dictum to the class, and when Pop took his boys into his confidence, as, through some one or two of their number he sometimes did, and told them thus and so, there was no question. That class at least observed his wishes to the letter. Hoover had been told to return to school and no questions asked, and the First Latin was virtually pledged to the arrangement. "_Aut impendere viam, aut poscere causas._"