“Do you know, Chips?”
“It depends what you think he’s done.”
“I’ll tell you,” said Jan with sudden yet quiet resolution, and a lift of his head as though the peak of a cap had been pulled down too far. “I had a secret when I came here, and Evan knew it but nobody else. It was a big secret—about my people and me too—and if it had come out then I’d have bolted like a rabbit. I know now that it wouldn’t have mattered as much as I thought it would; things about your people, or anything that ever happened anywhere else, don’t hurt or help much in a place like this. It’s what you can do and how you take things that matters here. But I didn’t know that then and I don’t suppose Evan did either. Yet he kept a quiet tongue in his head about everything he did know. And that’s what I owe him—all it meant to me then, and does still in a way—his holding his tongue like that!”
Still Chips held his; and now Jan was the prey of doubts which his own voice had silenced. All that the familiar debt had gained by clear statement was counteracted by the stony demeanour of its first auditor.
“Did he ever tell you, Chips?”
“The very first time I saw him, our very first term!”
“Not—not about my father and—the stables—and all that?”
“Everything!”
Jan threw himself back four years.
“Yet when I sounded you at the time——”