Arnold and Frank parted from him on the steps and Toby made his way across the yard, past the sun-dial at the meeting of the paths in front of Dudley and, finally, through the colonnade that joined Oxford and Whitson and so around to the entrance of his dormitory. As he went he puzzled again over the friendship that existed between Arnold and Frank. Personally, he thought Frank Lamson the most unlikeable fellow he had ever met. Perhaps, though, he reflected, Frank possessed some qualities apparent to Arnold and not to him. The two had been friends, though never exactly chums, for several years, while Toby and Arnold had known each other only since the preceding June. Probably when you had known a fellow three or four years you got to like him in spite of his――his faults. Toby almost said “meannesses,” but charitably substituted the other word. Of course, there was no reason why Arn shouldn’t go with Frank if he wished to, only――well, for a fortnight or so preceding Christmas recess Arn had spent a good deal more time with Frank than he had with Toby, and the latter wondered, as he climbed the twilight stairways to his room, whether Arn was beginning to get tired of him. He was very fond of Arnold and the contingency made him feel rather sad and lonely. He shed his sweater and cap and seated himself at the deal table, which just now was a study desk and not an ironing-board, and drew a book toward him. But his thoughts refused to interest themselves in Cæsar and he was soon staring out the window and drumming a slow tattoo on his teeth with the rubber tip of his pencil. Perhaps it was only imagination, but, looking back on the last two weeks of vacation, it seemed to him now that Arnold had been less chummy, that something of the wonderful friendship of the summer had been lacking. Of course, Arnold had been perfectly splendid to him, had given him an awfully good time in New York and had probably given up other good times in order to spend that week-end with him at Greenhaven. And there were the gold cuff-links, too. Toby arose and got them from a hidden corner of the top drawer in the bureau and took them back to the window and looked at them admiringly and even curiously, as though striving to draw reassurance from them. In the end he laid them on the table and sank back into his chair. They were handsome and costly, but they meant little, after all. Arnold had heaps of money to spend; as much, perhaps, as any fellow in school. Doubtless he would have given him something equally as fine had their friendship been far less close. Why, for all he knew, Arn might have given just such a Christmas present to Frank Lamson! A wave of something very much like jealousy went over him and he scowled at the cuff-links quite ferociously and pushed them distastefully aside. Just that afternoon he had noticed a new pin in Frank’s tie, a moonstone, he thought it was, held in a gold claw. It was just the sort of a thing that Arnold would select. In