Page:Hornung - Fathers of Men.djvu/129

 through the week's verses on the chimney piece in his hall, but now he turned his back to the blazing fire. "Will those who have a comma after 'nightingales' be good enough to hold up their hands?" A forest of hands flew up. "I'm afraid it's your mistake, Carpenter," resumed Haigh, with a final guffaw. "Well, I couldn't have pitched upon a finer object-lesson in the importance of punctuation, if I had tried; but when you come to look at it again, Carpenter, you'll find that even without the comma your reading was more ingenious than plausible." He turned back to the chimneypiece and the pile of verses. The. incident seemed closed, when suddenly Haigh was seen frowning thoughtfully into the fire. "Surely there was some other fellow did the same thing!" he exclaimed, and began glancing through the pile. "Ah! Rutter, of course! Jucundæ voces tacitæ sunt, carmina vivunt!"

His voice was completely changed as it rasped out the abhorred surname; it changed again before the end of Jan's hexameter.

"Were you helped in this, Rutter?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did you help him, Carpenter?"

"Yes, sir."

There was not an instant's hesitation before either answer. Yet the very readiness of the culprits to confess their crime was an evident aggravation in the eyes of Haigh, who flew into a passion on the spot.

"And you own up to it without a blush between you! And you, Rutter, expect me to believe that the same thing didn't happen last week, when you denied it!"

"It did not happen last week, sir," said Jan; but all save the first three words were drowned by Haigh.

"Silence!" he roared. "I don't believe a word you