must surely be a day of nectar. I could not help wondering whether any
man had ever played in the University match with such a load upon his
soul as E.M. Garland was taking to his forced slumbers; and then whether
any heavy-laden soul had ever hit upon two such brother confessors as
Raffles and myself!




CHAPTER III

Council of War


Raffles was humming a snatch of something too choice for me to recognise
when I drew in my head from the glorious night. The folding-doors were
shut, and the grandfather's clock on one side of them made it almost
midnight. Raffles would not stop his tune for me, but he pointed to the
syphon and decanter, and I replenished my glass. He had a glass beside
him also, which was less usual, but he did not sit down beside his glass;
he was far too fidgety for that; even bothering about a pair of pictures
which had changed places under some zealous hand in his absence, or
rather two of Mr. Hollyer's fine renderings of Watts and Burne-Jones of
which I had never seen Raffles take the slightest notice before. But it
seemed that they must hang where he had hung them, and for once I saw
them hanging straight. The books had also suffered from good intentions;
he gave them up with a shrug. Archives and arcana he tested or examined,
and so a good many minutes passed without a word. But when he stole back
into the inner room, after waiting a little at the folding-doors, there
was still some faint strain upon his lips; it was only when he returned,