The lustre of the victory over Hillbury rested on the quartette about forty-eight hours. Had Royce got beyond Benton on that last curve, as he had almost succeeded in doing, and Seaton's portion been defeat instead of victory, there would have been a cloud over the school for a much longer period. Owen, having never felt the change in atmosphere which defeat brings, did not appreciate his escape. The victory seemed an unimportant matter, taken lightly, soon forgotten. The school looked up, smiled, and went about its daily routine. Rob put his prize in his desk drawer, and followed the school's example. One of his unconfessed ambitions had been to win a prize for composition. Wolcott Lindsay had put the idea into his head, not by any direct suggestion, but by the respect with which he spoke of some of the fellows who had succeeded. Lindsay himself was on the _Seatonian_, but Owen felt no ambition to enter into competition before his schoolmates for a position on that paper. The composition was comparatively secret. If he tried and failed, nobody need know the fact but the judges who read the compositions. Owen's production on--let us not say what--was nearly ready to hand in. He had built no elaborate hopes upon it, but he would have liked sincerely to surprise his father with some achievement which Mr. Owen would value. Prowess in athletics was to Mr. Owen but superiority in play, often shared with the idle and the vicious. In scholarship Rob could never hope to rank above a low B; he had no gift for public speaking; no one ever urged him for office. In the composition, perhaps, he might win some place; it was at least worth trying. He was busy with this effort one evening after the rest of his work was done, when his attention was suddenly distracted by a hubbub which arose at that end of the corridor where lay the abiding-place of the Pecks. He knew they were both on study hours, Donald having just been put on along with French and Jacobson, as the result of a series of petty and apparently accidental annoyances in poor Mr. Payne's recitation room. It was hardly conceivable, therefore, that the twins would have attempted any noisy demonstration on their own initiative. Owen remembered the plagues, and hastened forth to have a part in the spectacle. Others were also curious. He noticed, as he hurried past, that Payner's door was just ajar; and through the six-inch crack to which Smith cautiously limited the opening of his door, his lank, narrow-shouldered form was silhouetted against the light of the study lamp in the background, while curious eyes, doubly protected by glasses and a study shield, peered wonderingly forth.