'Real illness barred too,' I said. Bradshaw is a man of resource, and
has been known to make himself genuinely ill in similar emergencies.

'Right you are. Slumbering in and real illness both barred. Anything
else you'd like to bar?'

I thought.

'No. Unless--' an idea struck me--'You're not going to run away?'

Bradshaw scorned to answer the question.

'Now you'd better buck up with your work,' he said, opening his book
again. 'You've got about as long odds as anyone ever got. But you'll
lose all the same.'

It scarcely seemed possible. And yet--Bradshaw was generally right. If
he said he had a scheme for doing--though it was generally for not
doing--something, it rarely failed to come off. I thought of my
sixpence, my only sixpence, and felt a distinct pang of remorse. After
all, only the other day the chaplain had said how wrong it was to bet.
By Jove, so he had. Decent man the chaplain. Pity to do anything he
would disapprove of. I was on the point of recalling my wager, when
before my mind's eye rose a vision of Bradshaw rampant and sneering,
and myself writhing in my chair a crushed and scored-off wreck. I drew
the line at that. I valued my self-respect at more than sixpence. If it
had been a shilling now--. So I set my teeth and turned once more to my
Thucydides. Bradshaw, having picked up the thread of his story again,
emitted hoarse chuckles like minute guns, until I very nearly rose and