"Right-o! But if I accuse him of supplying smuggled whiskey to the house, and he happens to be innocent, it's possible he may consider it his duty to mention the matter to Chilly. Won't you be rather landed if he does?" He gazed inquiringly at Linklater, and the latter, thus suddenly cornered, lowered his eyes. "It isn't the butler," he growled. "Who is it?" A pause. Then--"Atkins." (Atkins was the gate porter.) "Thanks," said Pip. "I'll tell Atkins that if he supplies another bottle I'll report him to the Head. But all that is by the way. What I want to say is this, Link: will you promise me on your honor to drop all this monkey-business and back me up in putting the house in decent order again? This long frost is playing Old Harry with the place; but if you--if we play the man this day, the bottom will drop out of the opposition completely. Will you promise, Link?" Pip was extremely red in the face. One cannot strain the foundations of an ancient friendship without feeling it. Linklater looked at him for a moment, and then gazed into the fire. "Supposing I don't," he said at length. "But you will?" "Yes; but supposing I _don't_?" "Then," said Pip deliberately, "I should have to give you a thundering good licking, Link." Linklater was no coward, but Pip's slow words dropped into his heart like ice. He felt miserably petty and mean, and he knew that he looked it. He raised the ghost of a laugh. "Wha--what the blazes do you mean, old man?" he queried uneasily. "Rum way to treat your friends, isn't it?" It was the first time that he had admitted their friendship during that interview. "Yes, filthy," said Pip. "But there's only one alternative--to report you to Chilly, and I don't want to do that. The less masters have to do with this job the better." Linklater plucked up courage. Pip seemed so good-tempered and serene. "Well, old chap," he said easily, "I absolutely refuse to fight you. The idea's absurd. So there!" He leaned back in his chair with the air of a man who has neatly turned an awkward corner. Pip looked at him grimly. "I didn't say fight," he explained. "I said I should have to give you a licking,--an ordinary, low-down caning, that is,--a monitor's lamming,--in here. Of course, if you resist, I shall have to knock you down till you give in; and then I--I shall bend you over in the usual way, that's all." He did not speak boastfully, but quietly and evenly, with his serious blue eyes fixed upon the boy in front of him. He had figured out the situation, and settled on his course of action. To him Linklater had ceased to be a friend, and was now an abstract problem, to be solved at all costs. He was prepared to knock Linklater senseless, if necessary, until he purged him of the evil spirit that possessed him. And Linklater knew it. There was a pause, and then Linklater's weaker nature suddenly crumpled up like a wet rag before Pip's overbearing steadiness.