Well, he and Pegram were merely cunning--nothing more. Mitchell was a good mathematician, and in money matters he excelled on a low plane; while Pegram was admitted to be a master in the art of cribbing, but no other. His bent of mind had been attracted to the subject of cribbing from the first, and while I hated him, and knew that he could never come to much good, I was bound to admit the stories told about his cribbing exploits showed great ingenuity combined with nerve. By a bitter irony, theology was his best subject, but only thanks to the possession of a Bible one inch square. He had found it when doing Christmas shopping with his aunt, who was his only relation, owing to his being an orphan, and when he asked her to buy it for him as one of his Christmas presents, she did so with pleasure and surprise, little dreaming of what was passing in his mind. I never saw the book, nor wished to see it, but Briggs, who did, told me it contained everything, only in such frightfully small print that you wanted a magnifying glass to read it. Needless to say, Pegram had the magnifying glass. And, thus armed, he naturally did Scripture papers second to none. He also manipulated a catapult for the benefit of his friends in the Lower Fourth, of whom he had a great many, and with this instrument, such was his delicacy of aim, he could send answers to questions in an examination through the air to other chaps, in the shape of paper pillets. He could also hurl insults in this way, or, in fact, anything. Once he actually fired his Bible across three rows of forms to Abbott. It flew through the air and fell at Abbott's feet, who instantly put one on it. But Brown, who was the master in command on the occasion, looked up at the critical moment and saw a strange object passing through the air. Only he failed to mark it down.
"What was that?" said Brown to Rice, who sat three chaps off Abbott.
"A moth, I think, sir," said Rice.
"Extraordinary time for a moth to be flying," said Brown.
"Very, sir," said Rice.
"Don't let it occur again, anyway," said Brown, who never investigated anything, but always ordered that it shouldn't occur again.
"No, sir," said Rice.
Then Abbott bent down to scratch his ankle, and all was well.
And this Pegram was supposed to have strategy as good as ours!
I never thought a real chance of a conflict would come, but it actually did in a most unexpected manner just before the holidays. The weather turned cold for a week, and then, after about three frosts, we had a big snow, and in about a day and a night there was nearly a foot of it. And, walking through the West Wood with Blades, I pointed out that the sand-pit, under the edge of the fir trees, would be a very fine spot for a battle on a small scale.