Peter lay directly in his path. He paused irresolutely at the foot of the steps. "Mr. Paragon." The Junior Prior asserted his authority with misgiving. "Sir?" "Go to your rooms." Peter descended the steps unsteadily. Then he stopped, looking wistfully towards his bath. It was too much. He began to climb back again. "Mr. Paragon," repeated the Junior Prior. "Sir?" "Need you do that again?" "This," objected Peter with the faintest parody of Dundoon, "is most important." The Junior Prior was seen to flush in the lamplight. "Mr. Paragon, come down!" Peter sighed and again started to descend. He missed a step and fell rudely towards the Junior Prior, who stepped back to receive him. But the Junior Prior caught his slippered heel in a low iron railing that skirted the lawn, and fell with his legs in the air. Peter, caught by the parapet, gazed thoughtfully at the legs of the Junior Prior. The Junior Prior was loosely clad. He had put his legs hastily into a pair of trousers, kept in place by the last abdominal button. Disordered by his sudden fall, the ends of the trousers projected beyond his feet. Everything happened in a moment. Peter saw his enemy delivered up. His bland good-fellowship of the evening surrendered to Berserker rage. He stooped, and in a flash caught hold of the loose ends of the trousers. Unconscious of his enormous strength, he pulled sharp and wild. The button gave with a snap, and Peter, staggered for a moment by the recoil, was next seen rushing up the lawn, a strange banner streaming about his head. Peter's friends were awed into silence. The ceremony which so largely figured in conversation at Gamaliel had at last been performed, and it had been performed on the Junior Prior. Peter, in mad rush, came upon a meditative figure. The Warden, working late into the night, was at last disturbed. He had arrived in time to see Peter staggering back from a recumbent figure in the middle distance. He watched Peter in his furious career down the lawn, and saw Peter's miserable victim glimmer hastily away into the far turret. The Warden was not ignorant of College politics. He already suspected that this was no ordinary achievement. "Well, Mr. Paragon," he said as Peter forged into view. "Are these your property?" He caught at the trousers, and Peter, struck comparatively sober, decided to temporise. "They are not my property, sir. They are, f-f-th' moment, borrowed." Peter felt very politic and clever. "Who is the owner of this property?" asked the Warden. "I'm sorry, sir, but I cannot tell." Peter was beginning to feel how impossible it was to face the fact that he had removed the trousers of the Junior Prior. He could not tell the Warden. It seemed indelicate. He wanted to cover the shame of his victim. "You know, of course, to whom this property belongs?" the Warden persisted. "Yes, sir." "But you refuse to say."