form prize, each gave up reams. Brown told me subsequently that he had
only had time to do sixteen sheets, and wanted to know whether I had
adopted Rutherford's emendation in preference to the old reading in
Question II. My prolonged stay had made him regard me as a possible
rival.

I dwell upon this part of my story, because it has an important bearing
on subsequent events. If I had not waited in the form-room I should not
have gone downstairs just behind Mellish. And if I had not gone
downstairs just behind Mellish, I should not have been in at the death,
that is to say the discovery of Bradshaw, and this story would have
been all beginning and middle, and no ending, for I am certain that
Bradshaw would never have told me a word. He was a most secretive
animal.

I went downstairs, as I say, just behind Mellish. St Austin's, you must
know, is composed of three blocks of buildings, the senior, the middle,
and the junior, joined by cloisters. We left the senior block by the
door. To the captious critic this information may seem superfluous, but
let me tell him that I have left the block in my time, and entered it,
too, though never, it is true, in the company of a master, in other
ways. There are windows.

Our procession of two, Mellish leading by a couple of yards, passed
through the cloisters, and came to the middle block, where the Masters'
Common Room is. I had no particular reason for going to that block, but
it was all on my way to the House, and I knew that Mellish hated having
his footsteps dogged. That Thucydides paper rankled slightly.

In the middle block, at the top of the building, far from the haunts of