hall in a silence due partly to the eminence of the discomfited ringleaders, and partly to the guilty conscience of the mob as accessories after the fact. Sprawson alone made light of the situation, and that chiefly at the expense of his superfine confederate.
"All aboard the Black Maria!" said Sprawson, taking the other by the arm. "I say, Charles, old cock, I wonder how you'll look with a convict's crop and a quiverful of broad arrows?"
And for once the great Charles made use of the baser language of his inferiors, and tossed his tawny mane in anger as he stalked out of the quad, a Phœbus Apollo setting in a cloud. But it really was the Major's landau that awaited them, a cockaded footman standing at the door. Phœbus gave a dying gleam, and stepped in as though the imposing equipage belonged to him.
And Sprawson shook every hand within reach, and played several kinds of fool with his handkerchief until the landau was out of sight.
Then indeed the quad became a Babel, from which a trained ear might have extracted a consensus of unshaken confidence in Sprawson and Cave major. The house, as a whole, entirely trusted them to hoodwink Major Mangles as they had already hoodwinked the Spook and even old Heriot himself. It was the last feat which made all things possible to these arch impostors. And only a severe old sage like Crabtree would have entertained any doubt upon the point, which his trenchant tongue argued against all and sundry till the quad was empty for the afternoon.
Jan happened to be playing in the first game on the Middle, while Chips had a humble place in the second Lower; at the joint call-over for the two grounds (4.30) it was whispered that neither Cave nor Sprawson had
