towel." "No, there's yours, you blasted idiot." Gordon was immensely shocked at the language. He had come from a preparatory school run by a master with strong views on swearing, and for that matter on everything. He had been kept thoroughly in order. He got out of the bathroom as quickly as possible and made for his dormitory. It did not take long to dress. There was indeed very little time, and as the half-hour struck, he was carried down in the throng to the dining-hall.

Breakfast is always rather a scramble, and nowhere more so than at a Public School. The usual Fernhurst breakfast lasted about ten minutes. Hardly anyone spoke, only the ring of forks on plates was heard and an occasional shout of "Tea" from the Sixth Form table. They alone could shout at meals, the others had to catch the servant's eye. To-day, however, there was a good deal of conversation. Those who had come by the last train had not seen all their friends the night before. There was much shaking of hands. In the middle a loud voice from the head of the Sixth Form table shouted out: "Silence! I want to see all new boys in my study at nine o'clock." It was Clarke, the head of the House, who spoke. He was tall, with pince-nez, one of those brilliant scholars who are too brilliant to get scholarships. He was a fanatic in many ways, a militarist essentially, a firebrand always. There was bound to be trouble during his reign. He could never let anything alone. He was a great fighter.

Gordon looked up with immense awe. Clarke looked so powerful, so tremendous; even Lovelace himself was not much greater. He wondered vaguely what would be said to them.

And indeed Clarke was even more imposing in his own study. The back of the room sloped down into a low alcove in which hung strange Egyptian curtains. The walls were decorated with a few Pre-Raphaelite photogravures. Behind the door was a pile of cases. Clarke sat with his back to the window.

"Now you are all quite new to school life," he began, "entirely ignorant of its perils and dangers, and you are now making the only beginning you can ever make. You start with clean, fresh reputations. I don't know how long you will remain so, but you must remember that you are members of the finest house in Fernhurst. Last year we had the two finest athletes, Wincheston and Lovelace, who played cricket for Leicestershire, and is now captain of the House. We had also the two finest scholars, Scott and Pembroke, both of whom won scholarships. Now we can't all be county cricketers, we can't all win scholarships, but we can all work to one end with an unfailing energy. You will find prefects here who will beat you if you play the ass. Well, I don't mind ragging much and it is no disgrace to be caned for that. But it is a disgrace to be beaten for slacking either at games or work. It shows that you are an unworthy member of the House. Now I want all of you to try. Some of you will perhaps never rise above playing on House games, or get higher than the Upper Fifth. But if you can manage to set an example of keenness you will have proved yourselves worthy of the School House, which is beyond doubt the House at Fernhurst. That's all I have got to say."

That scene was in many ways the most vivid in Gordon's career. From that moment he felt that he was no longer an individual, but a member of a great community. And afterwards when old boys would run down Clarke, and say how he had stirred up faction and rebellion, Gordon kept silent; he knew that whatever mistakes the head of the House might have made, he had the welfare of the House at heart and loved it with a blind, unreasoning love that was completely misunderstood.

It is inevitable that a new boy's first few days should be largely taken up in making mistakes, and though it is easy to laugh about them afterwards, at the time they are very real miseries. At Fernhurst, things are not made easy for the new boy. Gordon found himself placed in the Upper Fourth, under Fleming, a benevolent despot who was a master of sarcasm and was so delighted at making a brilliant attack on some stammering idiot that he quite forgot to punish him. "Young man, young man," he would say, "people who forget their books are a confounded nuisance, and I don't want confounded nuisances with me." Gordon got on with him very well on the whole, as he had a sense of humour and always laughed at his master's jokes. But he only did Latin and English in the Fourth room, for the whole school was split up into sets, regardless of forms, for sharing such less arduous labours as science, maths, French and Greek. So that Gordon found himself suddenly appointed to Mr Williams' Greek set No. V. with no idea of where to go. After much wandering, he eventually found the Sixth Form room. He entered; someone outside had told him to go in there. A long row of giants in stick-up collars confronted him. The Chief sat on a chair reading a lecture on the Maccabees. All eyes seemed turned on him.

"Please, sir," he quavered out in trembling tones, "is this Mr Williams' Greek set, middle school No. V?"

There was a roar of laughter. Gordon fled. After about five more minutes' ineffectual searching he ran into a certain Robertson in the cloisters. Now Robertson played back for the Fifteen.

"I say, are you one of the new boys for Williams' set?"

"Yes."

"Well, look here, he's setting us a paper, and I don't know much about it, and I rather want to delay matters. So look here, hide yourself for a few minutes. I am just going to find Meredith and have a chat."

For ten minutes Gordon wandered disconsolately about the courts. When at last Robertson returned with his protégé the hour was well advanced, and there would be no need for Robertson to have to waste his preparation doing an imposition.

On another occasion one of the elder members of his form told him to go to "Bogus" for French. Now "Bogus" was short for the Bogus officer, and was the unkind appellation of one Rogers. Tall, ascetic and superior, with the air of a great philosopher, he had, like Richard Feverel's uncle, Adrian Harley, "attained that felicitous point of wisdom from which one sees all mankind to be fools." He was one of the happy few who are really content; for in the corps as Officer Commanding he could indulge continuously in his favourite pastime of hearing his own voice, and as a clerk in orders the pulpit presented admirable opportunities for long talks that brooked no interruptions. In the common room his prolix anecdotes were not encouraged. But in the pulpit there was no gainsaying him. His dual personality embodied the spirit of "the Church Militant," a situation the humour of which the School did not fail to grasp. But of all this Gordon, of course, knew nothing. After a long search for this eminent divine, in perfect innocence he went up to a master he saw crossing the courts.

"Please, sir, can you tell me where Mr Bogus' class-room is?" He did not understand till weeks afterwards why the master took such a long time to answer, and seemed so hard put to it not to laugh.

The story provided amusement in the common room for many days. Rogers was not popular.

It was in this atmosphere of utter loneliness and inability to do anything right that Gordon's first week passed. Of the other new boys none of them seemed to him very much in his line. There was Foster, good-looking and attractive, but plausible and insincere. There was Rudd, a scholar who had passed into the Fifth, spectacled, of sallow appearance, and with a strange way of walking. Collins was not so bad, but his mind ran on nothing but football and billiard championships. The rest were nonentities, the set who drift through their six years, making no mark, hurting no one, doing little good. Finally they pass out into the world to swell the rout of civilised barbarians whom it "hurts to think" and who write to the