"I should think," Thornton said, as he pushed his chair back, "that I must have had over thirty men in here to-day. There were seventeen before twelve o'clock. I am thinking of putting a visitors' book in the passage, so that they can write their names and go away. Are you going to back me up to-morrow night?" he asked Jack. "They have persuaded you to stand?" "Dennison says it would be such a bad thing for the college if this man Webb got in. Of course it is a great honour for a fresher, but I am used to speaking; we have a debating society at home." He spoke as if the whole thing was not in the least important, and ran his fingers through his hair until it stood straight up on end. It was the sort of hair which looked like stubble. Jack was so discouraged that he did not know what to say, so I asked Thornton if he expected to be elected. "There doesn't seem to be any doubt about that; there are only about thirty members, and quite half of them have promised to support me. Webb of course is better known, but in some cases it does no harm to keep oneself in the background until the last moment. Then I shall speak." He seemed to think that his speech would settle everything completely. I wandered round the room waiting for Jack to bring forward his scheme if he could remember it, but he was sitting on the table sucking at a pipe which had no tobacco in it, so I drifted over to a book-case, and nearly the first book I saw was an edition of _Omar Khayyam_. This surprised me so much that I turned round to see if Thornton really looked like a lunatic, but I got no satisfaction from him, for I had once seen a man who might have been his brother, and then I had been playing cricket against an asylum. He was lying back in his chair gazing at the ceiling, and I pulled _Omar Khayyam_ out of the case and put it on the table for Jack to see. Then I sat down and waited for results, but I had to make no end of signs before he would take any notice of the book, for he was in such a state of despondency that I believe he thought I was trying to talk on my fingers. At last his eye fell on the book, and after I had nodded furiously at him, he jumped off the table and stood in front of Thornton. "You read _Omar Khayyam_?" he said, holding the book in his hand. Thornton stopped staring at the ceiling and sat forward with his elbows resting on his knees. "Yes," he answered; "at least, I used to until I knew it by heart." "He's a good brand of champagne," Jack went on. "Are you a friend of Dennison's?" Thornton asked, and there was a kind of hunted look in his eyes. "I'm not," I hastened to tell him, and at that moment I looked at my watch and discovered that I had already kept The Bradder waiting for ten minutes, so I had to go just as things were becoming interesting.