And not a game did Doe play until he had dictated all those lines. It occupied a week and two days. When I dropped my pen, having written the last word, the relief of thinking that I had no more lines to write was almost painful. I felt suddenly ill. My loins, aching alarmingly, reminded me that I had been in a sitting posture for many a weary hour; and my fingers, suffering from what I judged to be rheumatism or gout, fidgeted to go on writing. My mind, too, was confused so that I found myself repeating whole lines of Cicero, sometimes aloud; and my face was pale, save for a dangerous pink flush on the forehead. Life, however, seemed brightened by the sense of a task completed, and I began to think of someone else besides myself. "I say, Doe," I asked, "aren't you going to tell me where you were going when you joined that knock-kneed idiot Freedham?" "No," announced Doe. "But look here," I began, and was just about to tell him that Freedham was an unwholesome creature who had mysterious fits like a demoniac, when I remembered my promise of silence: so I went on lamely: "You will tell me one day, won't you?" "No," he repeated, feeling very firm and adamant and Napoleonic. "But, my darling blighter, why not?" "Because I don't choose to." "Then you're a pig. But you might, Doe. Out with it. There's nobody but me to hear you. And I understand." "No." "Well, tell me, how did you get back so early?" "You see," answered Doe, cryptically, "the sun came out; and when the sun came out, I came in." It was a romantic sentence such as would delight this rudimentary poet. Why he condescended to break his mighty silence even to this extent, I don't know. It was perhaps a boyish love of hinting at a secret which he mustn't disclose. An awful idea struck me. I say it was awful because, though stirring in itself, it brought the thought that I was left out of it. "Oh, Doe, have you--have you a SECRET SOCIETY?" "No." "Here, hang me, Doe," I said, "you're not only a shocking bad conversationalist, but also a little mad. That's your doctor's opinion. That'll be a guinea, please." And I got up to take the lines to Fillet. "I say, Rupert," said Doe, blushing and looking away. "Well?" I asked, with my hand on the door-knob. "I say," he stuttered, "you--you might just mention to Radley that I dictated _all_ the lines. It would sort of--I mean--Oh, but you needn't, if you don't want to." Sec.3