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“Soft-shell crabs, broiled live lobster, salmon, grass-plover, dough-birds, and rum omelette,” he was now reciting to Bertie.

“They say the rum there is old Jamaica brought in slave-ships,” said Bertie, reverently.

“I’ve heard he has white port of 1820,” said Billy; “and claret and champagne.”

Bertie looked out of the window. “This is the finest day there’s been,” said he. Then he looked at his watch. It was twenty-five minutes before Oscar. Then he looked Billy hard in the eye. “Have you any sand?” he inquired.

It was a challenge to Billy’s manhood. “Sand!” he yelled, sitting up.

Both of them in an instant had left the table and bounded out of the house. “I’ll meet you at Pike’s,” said Billy to Bertie. “Make him give us the black gelding.”

“Might as well bring our notes along,” Bertie called after his rushing friend; “and get John to tell you the road.”

To see their haste, as the two fled in opposite directions upon their errands, you would have supposed them under some crying call of obligation, or else to be escaping from justice.

Twenty minutes later they were seated behind the black gelding and bound on their journey in search of the bird-in-Hand. Their notes in Philosophy 4 were stowed under the buggy-seat.

“Did Oscar see you?” Bertie inquired.

“Not he,” cried Billy, joyously.

“Oscar will wonder,” said Bertie; and he gave the black gelding a triumphant touch with the whip.

You see, it was Oscar that had made them run go; or, rather, it was Duty and Fate walking in Oscar’s displeasing likeness. Nothing easier, nothing more reasonable, than to see the tutor and tell him they should not need him to-day. But that would have spoiled everything. They did not know it, but deep in their childlike hearts was a delicious sense that in thus unaccountably disappearing they had won a great game, had got away ahead of Duty and Fate. After all it did bear some resemblance to an escape from justice. .

Could he have known this, Oscar would have felt more superior than ever. Punctually at the hour agreed, ten o’clock he rapped at Billy’s door and stood waiting, his leather wallet of notes nipped safe between elbow and ribs. Then he knocked again. Then he tried the door, and as it was open, he walked deferentially into the sitting room. Sonorous snores came from one of the bedrooms. Oscar peered in and saw John; but he saw no Billy in the other bed. Then, always deferential, he sat down in the sitting room and watched a couple of prettily striped coats hanging in a half-open closet.

At that moment the black gelding was flirtatiously crossing the drawbridge over the Charles on the Allston Road. The gelding knew the clank of those suspending chains and the slight unsteadiness of the meeting halves of the bridge as well as it knew oats. But it could not enjoy its own entirely premeditated surprise quite so much as Bertie and Billy were enjoying their entirely unpremeditated flight from Oscar. The wind rippled on the water; down at the boat-house Smith was helping some one embark in a single scull; they saw the green meadows toward Brighton; their foreheads felt cool and unvexed, and each new minute had the savor of fresh forbidden fruit.

“How do we go?” said Bertie.

“I forgot I had a bet with John until I had waked him,” said Billy. “He bet me five last night I couldn’t find it, and I took him. Of course, after that I had no right to ask him anything, and he thought I was funny. He said I couldn’t find out if the landlady’s hair was her own. I went him another five on that.”

“How do you say we ought to go?” said Bertie, presently.