I had never seen him again. Though I'd visited Denis not long ago, while pursuing the affair of the Glass House in London, Middleton, as far as I remembered, had not been there.

"Well, it's interesting," Bartholomew remarked. "What are you going to do?"

I lifted my cup. "I will let it lie for now. He obviously did not want me to see him. But I'll watch. I do not trust Denis, nor any man associated with him."

"No, sir." Bartholomew resumed brushing. "Of course, it does no harm asking about in the kitchens. Why he's here, I mean."

"Your curiosity might prove as dangerous as mine, Bartholomew," I said.

"Yes, sir."

I turned the conversation back to the pranks that Rutledge wanted me to investigate, and frowned in thought. "I wonder whether one house has seen more of the pranks than the other. It would be difficult, for instance, for a boy in this house to get into Fairleigh at night."

"The Fairleigh boys would chuck him right out if they saw him." Bartholomew grinned. "And not in a nice manner, would they?"

The houses, the Head Master's and Fairleigh, were similar in amenities and distribution of boys, but the two houses were fierce rivals, each convinced that members of the other were weak and ineffectual. It is common thing among mortals, I had observed, that when placed even arbitrarily into this or that group, they immediately begin to defend themselves against all other groups. I do not exclude myself from this phenomenon. In the army, I valiantly defended the honor of the Thirty-Fifth Light Dragoons, and would have done so with my life. And of course, I esteemed the abilities of the light cavalry over the heavy. Still more serious was the manner in which cavalry viewed the infantry-that body of foot wobblers who could not shoot straight even standing on the ground and dug into place.

I fully admitted to prejudice in my views-I had realized once that if someone were to come along and paint a red or blue spot on each of our foreheads, we who had the blue spots would congregate to other blue-spotters and come up with reasons why we were infinitely better than the red-spotters.