The Pothunters

“Where have I seen that face before?” said a voice. Tony Graham looked up from his bag.

“Hullo, Allen,” he said, “what the dickens are you up here for?”

“I was rather thinking of doing a little boxing. If you’ve no objection, of course.”

“But you ought to be on a bed of sickness, and that sort of thing. I heard you’d crocked yourself.”

“So I did. Nothing much, though. Trod on myself during a game of fives, and twisted my ankle a bit.”

“In for the middles, of course?”

“Yes.”

“So am I.”

“Yes, so I saw in The Sportsman. It says you weigh eleven-three.”

“Bit more, really, I believe. Shan’t be able to have any lunch, or I shall have to go in for the heavies. What are you?”

“Just eleven. Well, let’s hope we meet in the final.”

“Rather,” said Tony.

It was at Aldershot⁠—to be more exact, in the dressing room of the Queen’s Avenue Gymnasium at Aldershot⁠—that the conversation took place.

It was always the custom for such Austinians as went up to represent the School at the annual competition to stop the night in the town. It was not, therefore, till just before breakfast on the following day that Tony arrived back at his House. The boarding houses at St. Austin’s formed a fringe to the School grounds. The two largest were the School House and Merevale’s. Tony was at Merevale’s. He was walking up from the station with Welch, another member of Merevale’s, who had been up to Aldershot as a fencer, when, at the entrance to the School grounds, he fell in with Robinson, his fag. Robinson was supposed by many (including himself) to be a very warm man for the Junior Quarter, which was a handicap race, especially as an injudicious Sports Committee had given him ten yards’ start on Simpson, whom he would have backed himself to beat, even if the positions had been reversed. Being a wise youth, however, and knowing that the best of runners may fail through under-training, he had for the last week or so been going in for a steady course of over-training, getting up in the small hours and going for before breakfast spins round the track on a glass of milk and a piece of bread. Master R. Robinson was nothing if not thorough in matters of this kind.

But today things of greater moment than the Sports occupied his mind. He had news. He had great news. He was bursting with news, and he hailed the approach of Tony and Welch with pleasure.

“I wonder where the dear Mutual gets to these afternoons,” said Dallas.

“The who?” asked MacArthur. MacArthur, commonly known as the Babe, was a day boy. Dallas and Vaughan had invited him to tea in their study.

“Plunkett, you know.”

“Why the Mutual?”

“Mutual Friend, Vaughan’s and mine. Shares this study with us. I call him dear partly because he’s head of the House, and therefore, of course, we respect and admire him.”

“And partly,” put in Vaughan, beaming at the Babe over a frying pan full of sausages, “partly because we love him so. Oh, he’s a beauty.”

“No, but rotting apart,” said the Babe, “what sort of a chap is he? I hardly know him by sight, even.”

“Should describe him roughly,” said Dallas, “as a hopeless, forsaken unspeakable worm.”

“Understates it considerably,” remarked Vaughan. “His manners are patronising, and his customs beastly.”

“He wears spectacles, and reads Herodotus in the original Greek for pleasure.”

“He sneers at footer, and jeers at cricket. Croquet is his form, I should say. Should doubt, though, if he even plays that.”

“But why on earth,” said the Babe, “do you have him in your study?”

Vaughan looked wildly and speechlessly at Dallas, who looked helplessly back at Vaughan.

“Don’t, Babe, please!” said Dallas. “You’ve no idea how a remark of that sort infuriates us. You surely don’t suppose we’d have the man in the study if we could help it?”

A long white ribbon of dusty road separated St. Austin’s from the lodge gates of Badgwick Hall, the country seat of Sir Alfred Venner, M.P., also of 49A Lancaster Gate, London. Barrett walked rapidly for over half an hour before he came in sight of the great iron gates, flanked on the one side by a trim little lodge and green meadows, and on the other by woods of a darker green. Having got so far, he went on up the hill till at last he arrived at his destination. A small hedge, a sloping strip of green, and then the famous Dingle. I am loath to inflict any scenic rhapsodies on the reader, but really the Dingle deserves a line or two. It was the most beautiful spot in a country noted for its fine scenery. Dense woods were its chief feature. And by dense I mean well supplied not only with trees (excellent things in themselves, but for the most part useless to the nest hunter), but also with a fascinating tangle of undergrowth, where every bush seemed to harbour eggs. All carefully preserved, too. That was the chief charm of the place. Since the sad episodes of Morton-Smith and Ainsworth, the School for the most part had looked askance at the Dingle. Once a select party from Dacre’s House, headed by Babington, who always got himself into hot water when possible, had ventured into the forbidden land, and had returned hurriedly later in the afternoon with every sign of exhaustion, hinting breathlessly at keepers, dogs, and a pursuit that had lasted fifty minutes without a check.