The clocks of Massachusetts struck eleven. Oscar rose doubtfully from his chair in Billy’s study. Again he looked into Billy’s bedroom and at the empty bed. Then he went for a moment and watched the still forcibly sleeping John. He turned his eyes this way and that, and after standing for a while moved quietly back to his chair and sat down with the leather wallet of notes on his lap, his knees together, and his unblocked shoes touching. In due time the clocks of Massachusetts struck noon. In a meadow where a brown amber stream ran, lay Bertie and Billy on the grass. Their summer coats were off, their belts loosened. They watched with eyes half closed the long water-weeds moving gently as the current waved and twined them. The black gelding, brought along a farm road and through a gate, waited at its ease in the field beside a stone wall. Now and then it stretched and cropped a young leaf from a vine that grew over the wall, and now and then the want wind brought down the fruit blossoms all over the meadow. They fell from the tree where Bertie and Billy lay, and the boys brushed them from their faces. Not very far away was Blue Hill, softly shining; and crows high up in the air came from it occasionally across here. By one o’clock a change had come in Billy’s room. Oscar during that hour had opened his satchel of philosophy upon his lap and read his notes attentively. Being almost word perfect in many parts of them, he now spent his unexpected leisure in acquiring accurately the language of still further paragraphs. “The sharp line of demarcation which Descartes drew between consciousness and the material world,” whispered Oscar with satisfaction, and knew that if Descartes were on the examination paper he could start with this and go on for nearly twenty lines before he would have to use any words of his own. As he memorized, the chambermaid, who had come to do the bedrooms three times already and had gone away again, now returned and no longer restrained her indignation. “Get up Mr. Blake!” she vociferated to the sleeping John; “you ought to be ashamed!” And she shook the bedstead. Thus John had come to rise and discover Oscar. The patient tutor explained himself as John listened in his pyjamas. “Why, I’m sorry,” said he, “but I don’t believe they’ll get back very soon.” “They have gone away?” asked Oscar, sharply. “Ah--yes,” returned the reticent John. “An unexpected matter of importance.” “But, my dear sir, those gentlemen know nothing! Philosophy 4 is tomorrow, and they know nothing.” “They’ll have to stand it, then,” said John, with a grin. “And my time. I am waiting here. I am engaged to teach them. I have been waiting here since ten. They engaged me all day and this evening. “I don’t believe there’s the slightest use in your waiting now, you know. They’ll probably let you know when they come back.”