"Never!" he cried, and added--"God help him if his mother hears!" He was so genuinely concerned indeed that he went round to 60 Rectory Walk to find out by indirect examination if Mrs. Caspar had heard. She had; and was distraught. "If he takes to that, I'll turn him out of the house!" she cried savagely. "Straight I will!" And there was no question that she meant what she said. "The best way to make trouble is to meet it half-way," muttered the schoolmaster, cowed for once by the woman's terrible emotion. "Give the boy a chance--even if he is your own son." "Alf says he was blind at the match," the other answered doggedly. "Alf!" scoffed Mr. Pigott, savage in his turn. "I wouldn't care that what Alf says about his brother. I know your Alf." "And I don't then," said Mrs. Caspar. "I try to keep it fair between em--for all what folks may say different." That evening Mr. Pigott met Alf in Church Street. The schoolmaster stopped, holding with his eye the youth in the stained blue overall. Alf approached him delicately, with averted face and a sly smile. It was clear that he courted the encounter. Mr. Pigott came to the point at once. "How's Ern?" he boomed in a voice of challenge. Alf dropped his eyes. "Beg pardon, sir," he said, "our Ern's goin the same way as dad." Mr. Pigott gazed at him as one stupefied. Then in a flash he understood ... Mr. Trupp was right. The boy was abnormal: his spirit dwarfed and stunted by the miserable tenement in which it was forced to dwell. This sudden peep into one of the sewers of Nature, this illumination of what before had been to him obscure, this swift suggestion of Evil lurking obscenely in the dusk to leap on the unwary, brought him up abruptly. His anger passed for the moment. Something between fear and pity laid hold of him. "I suppose you're glad," he said quietly. Alf smiled that satyr-like smile of his, sickly and uncertain. "Ah, you never did like me, Mr. Pigott!" he sneered. "I don't," answered Mr. Pigott. "I never did. But I'm beginning to understand you. You're possessed." He went on down the street and called at the Manor-house. Mrs. Trupp was, he knew, a staunch friend of Ernie's. The lady was playing with her children in the garden. But she gave both her ears to her visitor when she knew his errand. Had she heard anything? Mrs. Trupp coloured. She _had_ heard something which greatly perturbed her pure and beautiful spirit. Her Joe, home from Rugby, had reported that on the way back from a match at Lewes Ernie Caspar had taken a drop which had made him funny. "It was only a little," the lady ended. "Joe said it wasn't enough to make an ordinary canary queer. But it upset Ernest for the moment." Mr. Pigott marched on down the hill to the railway station. It was shutting-up time, and the object of his concern was just leaving the office. Mr. Pigott unceremoniously seized the boy by the hand.