LINKLATER came to school after Pip,--one year, to be precise,--but by the time that both had attained to the dignity of seniors they were firm friends. They were a curiously assorted couple. Pip at the age of eighteen was as inscrutable and reserved as ever, though his popularity with the school was unbounded, and his influence, when he chose to exert it, enormous. He had already been a member of the Eleven for three years, and should by rights this year have been captain. But alas! though Pip had been duly washed by the high tides of promiscuous September promotions out of the all-glorious Lower Shell into the Upper Shell, and from the Upper Shell by the next inundation into the Fifth, he had not as yet qualified for a Monitorship. Linklater was a handsome, breezy, rather boisterous youth, quick of tongue and limber of limb. He possessed his fair share of brains, but not the corresponding inclination to use them; and he was a natural athlete of the most attractive type,--a graceful mover, a pretty bat, and a beautiful racquets player. But somehow he was not universally popular. Everybody was his friend, it is true, but that was chiefly because nobody cares to be the avowed antagonist of a man who possesses a sharp tongue and no scruples about using it, especially when these gifts are backed by such undoubted assets as membership of the Fifteen and Eleven. There was something not quite right about Linklater. Perhaps he was too grownup in his manners. He was popular, too, with masters, which is not invariably a good sign in a boy. Still, he was not quite so grownup at eighteen as when he first came to Grandwich; and thereby hangs a tale.