distinctive trait of Evan's, peculiar only in its intensity. Both his old companions were equally reminded of it now. But Jan's was the hard position! To have got in touch with Evan at last, to admire him as he always had and would, and yet to have that admiration promptly tempered by this gratuitous exhibition of a radical fault! Though he put it to himself in simpler fashion, this was Jan's chief trouble, and it would have been bad enough just then without the necessity that he foresaw of choosing between Chips and Evan.
"I don't know about duty," he temporised, "but I don't believe we should be licked."
"Of course we shouldn't!" cried Chips. "But it wouldn't kill us if we were."
"You agree with him?" persisted Evan, in a threatening voice of which the meaning was not lost on Jan. It meant out-of-touch again in no time, and for good.
"I don't know," sighed Jan. "I suppose we ought to say what we've seen; and it'll pay us, too, if it's going to get out anyhow; but I do think it's hard on you—Devereux. We dragged you into it. You never wanted to come in; you said so over and over." Jan gloomed and glowered, then brightened in a Hash. "Look here! I votes us two tell Heriot what we've seen. Chips! Most likely he won't ask if we were by ourselves; he's sure to think we were. If he does ask, we can say there was another chap, but we'd rather not mention his name, because he was dead against the whole thing, and never saw all we did!"
Jan had unfolded his bright idea directly to Carpenter, whose opinion he awaited with evident anxiety. He resented being placed like this between the old friend and the new, and having to side with one or the other, especially when he himself could not see that it mattered
