“Good heavens! man,” exclaimed Haydock, “aren’t you going to take highest honours in music? Why, you can do anything!” Haydock considered his own little thumpings important only in so far as they enabled him to understand a talent like Bancroft’s. “Oh, I don’t know,” answered Dilford, with indifference. “My father wants me to go to work; I don’t suppose I’ll be here long.” “Won’t you, really? I knew that Billy wasn’t going to stay; but I had an idea you would.” Haydock alluded to Billy’s probable departure with the emotion he would have displayed had he been predicting a change in the weather. Billy pricked up his ears and his eyebrows at once. “What makes you say that?” he demanded quickly. Even Dilford dropped his customary listlessness, and looked interested. “Why--I thought it was more or less settled.” The senior turned from one to the other in slow surprise, “If I’ve said anything I ought not to have--given things away, I mean--I’m awfully sorry. But perhaps they were mistaken.” Billy’s face, across which flitted a shade of anxiety, told him that he was perfectly safe in making a “bluff” at changing the subject. “No, no!” Billy jerked out, impatiently; “go on! who are you talking about? You’ve heard something important,” something that didn’t emanate from John, he was thinking. “What did they say? I insist on knowing.” “It really wasn’t much; merely that one or two of the instructors--I know some of the younger ones rather well--seemed to think that you wouldn’t--that in fact you couldn’t be with us after the midyears. That’s all. I thought you knew.” “You’re bitched all right, all right,” laughed Bancroft. “They said that, did they?” Billy let fall these words portentously; it was as if he were on the point of framing a great resolution. “That’s precisely what they said.” “Well, then--by heaven! I’ll fool them.” He really meant it. “Oh, I wish you would! It would be easy after all. There’s time yet. I’ll help you with your English--both courses--and your Latin. You’re all right in French, of course, and the History won’t be so terrible. Is it a go?” Haydock held out his hand. “I’ll fool them,” repeated Billy, solemnly. He gravely let his long, brown fingers rest in Haydock’s palm. And Haydock had one of those moments of quiet exultation that are the perquisites of the intelligent. The next morning Billy and Dilly disappeared from Cambridge, and were neither seen nor heard of for five days. On the afternoon of the fourth day John, looking positively thin, turned up in Haydock’s room. “Get up a search party and explore darkest Boston,” advised the senior, drumming on the desk with his pencil. “Oh, I did!” John’s tone was without hope. “Harry Hollis and Jimmy Fenton took me all over--to the most awful hotels and places. They seemed to know Billy at all of them; but he wasn’t there. I never had such a night. I don’t know what to do.” “How much money did he have?” Haydock continued to drum thoughtfully.