each way, I suppose?"

Todd gave his whole mind to the refereeing, and soon warmed to business.
He found that there was heaps more fun in it than he had bargained for,
and as he was a sharp, quick, and clever youth he came out of the ordeal
with flying colours. He made mistakes, naturally, but momentous issues
depended on none of them, and he felt he had not done so badly when
Higgins, at half-time, spoke to him as one in authority to another. But
Palmer, the captain of Sharpe's lot--the beaten side--put the coping
stone to a pleasant afternoon by asking Gus to referee for them against
Merishall's. Gus walked off the field a happy man.

From that afternoon Todd had no excuse for loafing away any halfer. His
services as referee were in demand, not merely as a matter of utility,
but of preference. Taylor, who had watched rather anxiously Todd's
progress, smiled easily at the success of his understudy.

"I say," said Bourne to me, "what's come over Todd? Blessed if that usual
ass didn't handle the Fifth _v_. Sixth to-day simply beautifully.
When you're lynched, Gus will fill your shoes completely. Talks so-so,
too. Who's improving him?"

I acted on Phil's advice, and Todd and I parcelled out the outstanding
fixtures between us. Then Todd became one of the best-known fellows in
the school, and strolled up the hill with Worcester, Acton, Vercoe, and
other heroes as to the manner born. The old, lazy, shallow, shifty,
shiftless Gus was drifting into the background every day.

Then Todd gave us a final shock. I was hurrying down the High when a
constable asked me if I could tell him "where a young gentleman named