But the calculations were based on false premises. After Strachan had failed to convert, and the game had been resumed with the score at one try all, play settled down in the centre, and neither side could pierce the other’s defence. Once Jevons got off for Ripton, but Trevor brought him down safely, and once Rand-Brown let his man through, as before, but Strachan was there to meet him, and the effort came to nothing. For Wrykyn, no one did much except tackle. The forwards were beaten by the heavier pack, and seldom let the ball out. Allardyce intercepted a pass when about ten minutes of play remained, and ran through to the back. But the back, who was a capable man and in his third season in the team, laid him low scientifically before he could reach the line.
Altogether it looked as if the match were going to end in a draw. The Wrykyn defence, with the exception of Rand-Brown, was too good to be penetrated, while the Ripton forwards, by always getting the ball in the scrums, kept them from attacking. It was about five minutes from the end of the game when the Ripton right centre-three-quarter, in trying to punt across to the wing, miskicked and sent the ball straight into the hands of Trevor’s colleague in the centre. Before his man could get round to him he had slipped through, with Trevor backing him up. The back, as a good back should, seeing two men coming at him, went for the man with the ball. But by the time he had brought him down, the ball was no longer where it had originally been. Trevor had got it, and was running in between the posts.
This time Strachan put on the extra two points without difficulty.
Ripton played their hardest for the remaining minutes, but without result. The game ended with Wrykyn a goal ahead—a goal and a try to a try. For the second time in one season the Ripton match had ended in a victory—a thing it was very rarely in the habit of doing.
The senior day-room at Seymour’s rejoiced considerably that night. The air was dark with flying cushions, and darker still, occasionally, when the usual humorist turned the gas out. Milton was out, for he had gone to the dinner which followed the Ripton match, and the man in command of the house in his absence was Mill. And the senior day-room had no respect whatever for Mill.
Barry joined in the revels as well as his ankle would let him, but he was not feeling happy. The disappointment of being out of the first still weighed on him.
At about eight, when things were beginning to grow really lively, and the noise seemed likely to crack the window at any moment, the door was flung open and Milton stalked in.
“What’s all this row?” he inquired. “Stop it at once.”
As a matter of fact, the row had stopped—directly he came in.
“Is Barry here?” he asked.
“Yes,” said that youth.
“Congratulate you on your first, Barry. We’ve just had a meeting and given you your colours. Trevor told me to tell you.”
XVII
The Watchers in the Vault
For the next three seconds you could have heard a cannonball drop. And that was equivalent, in the senior day-room at Seymour’s, to a dead silence. Barry stood in the middle of the room leaning on the stick on which he supported life, now that his ankle had been injured, and turned red and white in regular rotation, as the magnificence of the news came home to him.
Then the small voice of Linton was heard.
“That’ll be six d. I’ll trouble you for, young Sammy,” said Linton. For he had betted an even sixpence with Master Samuel Menzies that Barry would get his first fifteen cap this term, and Barry had got it.
A great shout went up from every corner of the room. Barry was one of the most popular members of the house, and everyone had been sorry for him when his sprained ankle had apparently put him out of the running for the last cap.
“Good old Barry,” said Drummond, delightedly. Barry thanked him in a dazed way.
Everyone crowded in to shake his hand. Barry thanked then all in a dazed way.
And then the senior day-room, in spite of the fact that Milton had returned, gave itself up to celebrating the occasion with one of the most deafening uproars that had ever been heard even in that factory of noise. A babel of voices discussed the match of the afternoon, each trying to outshout the other. In one corner Linton was beating wildly on a biscuit-tin with part of a broken chair. Shoeblossom was busy in the opposite corner executing an intricate step-dance on somebody else’s box. McTodd had got hold of the red-hot poker, and was burning his initials in huge letters on the seat of a chair. Everyone, in short, was enjoying himself, and it was not until an advanced hour that comparative quiet was restored. It was a great evening for Barry, the best he had ever experienced.
Clowes did not learn the news till he saw it on the notice-board, on the following Monday. When he saw it he whistled softly.
“I see you’ve given Barry his first,” he said to Trevor, when they met. “Rather sensational.”
“Milton and Allardyce both thought he deserved it. If he’d been playing instead of Rand-Brown, they wouldn’t have scored at all probably, and we should have got one more try.”
“That’s all right,” said Clowes. “He deserves it right enough, and I’m jolly glad you’ve given it him. But things will begin to move now, don’t you think? The League ought to have a word to say about the business. It’ll be a facer for them.”
“Do you remember,” asked Trevor, “saying that you thought it must be Rand-Brown who wrote those letters?”
“Yes. Well?”
“Well, Milton had an idea that it was Rand-Brown who ragged his
