Burgess struggled out of his gown and threw it over one shoulder.
"Not for long did we commune together," he said, as we walked towards Little End. "A word here and a word there. I knew little but that one of my young men was come back to me with eyes that saw not. The laddies call him the 'Black Panther,'" he added.
"So my cousin tells me. How did you find that out, sir?"
He shook his head vaguely.
"I am an old man, broken with the cares and sorrows of this life, yet—all things are revealed unto me. There was turbulence in the Under Sixth when Plancus was Consul."
"I believe there was, sir," I admitted.
Burgess beckoned with one finger.
"Come and see," he said.
We had walked round from Little End to the front of his house, and he now led the way back through Big Gateway, across Great Court and up the steps into Great School. The folding doors of Under Sixth room stood open, and as we approached, a boy was standing up reading a passage of Greek Testament; O'Rane stopped him at the end of the chapter, and the construe began.