By supper time the drizzle had turned to a driving rain that beat against the front windows of the halls and filled the walks with unexpected puddles into which you walked unseeingly. It was what The Duke, sprinting back from the library after supper――even The Duke had to look up a reference occasionally――termed to himself “a dark, dank, drooly nicht.” He reached the entrance to Clarke out of breath and somewhat damp, but his spirits were not affected. It took more than that to affect them. Even the fact that authority in the person of one Edmund Gaddis, instructor in English, familiarly known as “Old Tige,” had decreed that The Duke should hand in a theme before Saturday noon, and that Saturday noon was less than seventeen hours away, cast no spell of gloom over his gayety. When, having reached the head of the first flight, he descried Adler coming along the corridor, he immediately stationed himself against the newel post, clapped a hand to an imaginary sword hilt and scowled silently at the approaching figure. Adler, sighting his foe at the same moment, placed a quick hand on his own weapon and, hugging the further wall, advanced cautiously, with an insolent expression. No word was spoken. Eyeing each other intently, haughtily, they met and passed. The weapons were not drawn. Adler, circling at a safe distance, reached the stairs and, with a last malevolent glare, which was met and returned, passed from sight. Whereupon The Duke dropped his hand from his sword hilt and proceeded upstairs, three steps at a time. Just why the two went through this procedure they did not know, but they always did, wherever and whenever they met. Doubtless it added spice to life.