O'Rane looked up, unabashed, but with generous admiration.
"Didn't I make it oxyton, sir?" he asked.
"Thou didst not. And wherefore didst thou counterfeit the image and superscription of Sinclair?"
O'Rane hesitated discreetly, but, as Burgess too was silent, he elected to embark on a candid explanation.
"He wrote his name, sir, and then I bagged the paper...."
"'Bagged,' laddie? What strange tongue is this?"
"Stole, sir. I stole the paper and wrote the verses underneath. He doesn't know anything about it."
"Yet wherefore?"
O'Rane shrugged his shoulders.
"It seemed such rot—so hard on him, sir, to be super-ed just because he can't get his remove."