It was not a very bad attack--it was not the first, but Gwatkin didn't know that at the time--there were no violent ravings, only mutterings and depression--dreadful depression. Gwatkin and the bed-maker looked after him during the morning, and towards noon he fell into a deep sleep. It didn't seem at all likely that he would wake for hours. The bed-maker had had some experience of such cases, and she knew that the fever would take eight or ten hours' sleep to spend itself, and then he would awake with shaking hands and a splitting headache, and have a fine time of it for a week. Leaving him as she thought sleeping soundly, she went about her work. She had to clear the tables of the other men on the staircase, but before she went she took the precaution to fasten his oak, and to take the key to Gwatkin's rooms. Gwatkin ran over as fast as he could to Edgell's rooms. He had given such strict injunctions that he was not to be left alone on any pretence. Run as fast as he could, he was only just in time. Had he been a minute later he would have been too late. He took the razor from the poor fellow's hand, and he bound up the wound he had made with it as he best could without assistance. He had not the heart to call for help, to reveal his miserable secret to the whole college. He did for him as he would have wished others to have done for himself if he had been in his place. He kept his secret. There was a man on his own staircase who had a sister a nurse at Addenbroke's, and when he had done all he could for Edgell, and fastened his arms down to the bed, Gwatkin ran across the court and brought Brannan over. He had to let him into the secret; there was no help for it. He saw exactly how matters stood. He was in his third year, and it was not the first time that he had helped to cover up an act of undergraduate folly. Brannan went away to fetch his sister. He could promise her silence. Phyllis Brannan was as true as steel; but in his haste and agitation he had left the outer oak open, and Lucy came in. Wyatt Edgell's secret had been faithfully kept by these men and women. Only one of them had committed a breach of trust--Lucy had told Pamela. She couldn't help it, she explained, if she had had to die for it the next day; but Pamela had held her tongue. Not a soul in the college guessed his secret--his dreadful secret. Everybody looked up to him, and praised him, and expected great things of him--everybody but his bed-maker. She knew something about that last orgie. She had helped to put him to bed, and she had cleared away the small sodas the next morning. She smiled when she saw him settling down to work on the evening of the day when he had brought Lucy to the lodge from Newnham. 'A lot of readin' 'e'll get through,' she said, shaking her head as she went down the stairs with her basket under her shawl. ''E'll be under the table, I reckon, when I come in in the mornin'.'