Thorn would have spoken to the soulful Prescott,--told him gently that he didn’t seem to be quite in sympathy with the work of the course,--if Prescott had condescended to go to his lectures in the six or seven weeks between the end of the Christmas recess and the examination period. But Prescott cut Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, at half-past two o’clock, with a regularity that, considered as regularity, was admirable. Toward the last, he did drop in every now and then, sit near the door, and slip out again before the hour was ended. This was just after he had been summoned by the Recorder to the Office for “cutting.” Thorn never got a chance to speak to him. He might have approached the boy at the club; but the instructor shrank from taking advantage of his connection with that place to make a delicate official duty possible. He had all along avoided “shop” there so elaborately,--had made so light of it when the subject had come up,--that he couldn’t bring himself at that late day to arise, viper like, from the hearthstone and smite. A note of warning would have had to be light, facetious, and consequently without value, in order not to prove a very false and uncalled for note indeed. The ready coöperation of the Dean, Thorn refrained from calling on; he was far from wishing to get Prescott into difficulties. By the time the examination day arrived, the instructor was in a state of turmoil that in ordinary circumstances would have been excessive and absurd. In the case of Thorn, it was half pathetic, half contemptible. He knew that in spite of Prescott’s soul (a superabundance of soul is, as a matter of fact, a positive hindrance in passing examinations), the boy would do wretchedly. To give him an E--the lowest possible mark, always excepting, of course, the jocose and sarcastic F--would be to bring upon himself Prescott’s everlasting anger and “despision.” Of this Thorn was sure. Furthermore, the mark would not tend to make the instructor wildly popular at the club; for although everybody was willing to concede that Prescott was not a person of brilliant mental attainments, he was very much beloved. One hears a good deal about the “rough justice of boys.” Thorn knew that such a thing existed, and did not doubt but that, in theory, he would be upheld by the members of the club if he gave Prescott an E, and brought the heavy hand of the Office down on him. But the justice of boys, he reflected, was, after all, rough; it would acknowledge his right to flunk Prescott, perhaps, and, without doubt, hate him cordially for doing it. Thorn’s aversion to being hated was almost morbid.