now and Saturday they would have two clear days to practise. On Saturday, the Sixth would play the School at three o’clock.”

And Mr Frampton, there being nothing more to say on this subject, went off to see what his next pleasant little surprise should be. Bolsover, meanwhile, snarled over the matter in ill-tempered conclaves in the play-ground.

“It’s simple humbug,” said Farfield, one of the Sixth. “I defy him to make me play if I don’t choose.”

“I shall stand with my hands in my pockets, and not move an inch,” said another.

“I mean to sit down on the grass and have a nap,” said a third.

“All very well,” said a youngster, called Forrester; “if you can get all the other fellows to do the same. But if some of them play, it’ll look as if you funked it.”

“Who cares what it looks like?” said Farfield. “It will look like not being made to do what they’ve no right to make us do—that’s all I care about.”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Pridger, another of the Sixth; “if it came to the School licking us, I fancy I’d try to prevent that.”

“And if it came to the Sixth licking us,” said young Forrester, who was of the audacious order, “I fancy I’d try to put a stopper on that.”

There was a smile at this, for the valiant junior was small for his age, and flimsily built. Smiles, however, were not the order of the day, and for the most part Bolsover brooded over her tribulations in sulky silence.

The boys had not much in common, and even a calamity like the present failed to bring them together. The big boys mooned about and thought of their lost liberties, of the afternoons in the tuck-shop, of the yellow-backed novels under the trees, of the loafings down town, and wondered if they should ever be happy again. The little boys—some of them—wept secretly in corners, as they pictured themselves among the killed and wounded on the terrible football field. And as the sharp October wind cut across the play-ground, they shuddered, great and small, at the prospect of standing there on Saturday, without coats or waistcoats, and wondered if Frampton was designedly dooming them to premature graves.

A few, a very few, of the more sensible ones, tried to knock up a little practice game and prepare themselves for the terrible ordeal. Among these were two boys belonging to the group whose conversation the reader has already overheard.

One of them, young Forrester, has already been introduced. Junior as he was, he was a favourite all over Bolsover, for he was about the only boy in the school who was always in good spirits, and did not seem to be infected with the universal dry-rot of the place. He was a small, handsome boy, older indeed then he looked (for he was nearly fifteen), not particularly clever or particularly jocular. To look at him you would have thought him delicate, but there was nothing feeble in his manner. He looked you straight in the face with a pair of brown saucy eyes; he was ready to break his neck to oblige any one; and his pocket-money (fancy a Bolsover boy having pocket-money!) was common property. Altogether he was a phenomenon at Bolsover, and fellows took to him instinctively, as fellows often do take to one whose character and disposition are a contrast to their own. Besides this, young Forrester was neither a prig nor a toady, and devoted himself to no one in particular, so that everybody had the benefit of his good spirits, and enjoyed his pranks impartially.

The other boy, who appeared to be about eighteen or nineteen, was of a different kind. He, too, was a cut above the average Bolsoverian, for he was clever, and had a mind of his own. But he acted almost entirely on antipathies. He disliked everybody, except, perhaps, young Forrester, and he found fault with everything. Scarfe—that was his name was a Sixth Form boy, who did the right thing because he disliked doing what everybody else did, which was usually the wrong. He disliked his school-fellows, and therefore was not displeased with Mr Frampton’s reforms; but he disliked Mr Frampton and the new masters, and therefore hoped the school would resist their authority. As for what he himself should do, that would depend on which particular antipathy was uppermost when the time came.

Curiously enough, Bolsover by no means disliked Scarfe. They rather respected a fellow who had ideas of his own, when they themselves had so few; and as each boy, as a rule, could sympathise with his dislike of everybody else, with one exception, he found plenty of adherents and not a few toadies.

Forrester was about the only boy he really did not dislike, because Forrester did not care twopence whether any one liked him or not, and he himself was quite fond of Scarfe.

“What do you think the fellows will do?” said the junior, after attempting for the sixth time to “drop” the ball over the goal without success.

“Why, obey, of course,” said Scarfe scornfully.

“Shall you?”

“I suppose so.”

“Why, I thought you were going to stick out.”

“No doubt a lot of the fellows would like it if I did. They always like somebody else to do what they don’t care to do themselves.”

“Well, you and I’ll be on different sides,” said the youngster, making another vain attempt at the goal. “I’m sorry for you, my boy.”

“So am I; I’d like to see the Sixth beaten. But there’s not much chance of it if the kicking’s left to you.”

“I tell you what,” said Forrester, ignoring the gibe. “I’m curious to know what Cad Jeffreys means to do. We’re bound to have some fun if he’s in it.”

“Cad Jeffreys,” said Scarfe, with a slight increase of scorn in his face and voice, “will probably assist the School by playing for the Sixth.”

Forrester laughed.

“I hear he nearly drowned himself in the bath the first day, and half scragged Shrimpton for grinning at him. If he gets on as well at football, Frampton will have something to answer for. Why, here he comes.”

“Suppose you invite him to come and have a knock up with the ball,” suggested the senior.

The figure which approached the couple was one which, familiar as it was to Bolsover, would have struck a stranger as remarkable. A big youth, so disproportionately built as to appear almost deformed, till you noticed that his shoulders were unusually broad and his feet and hands unusually large. Whether from indolence or infirmity it was hard to say, his gait was shambling and awkward, and the strength that lurked in his big limbs and chest seemed to unsteady him as he floundered top-heavily across the play-ground. But his face was the most remarkable part about him. The forehead, which overhung his small, keen eyes, was large and wrinkled. His nose was flat, and his thick, restless lips seemed to be engaged in an endless struggle to compel a steadiness they never attained. It was an unattractive face, with little to redeem it from being hideous. The power in it seemed all to centre in its angry brow, and the softness in its restless mouth. The balance was bad, and the general impression forbidding. Jeffreys was nineteen, but looked older, for he had whiskers—an unpardonable sin in the eyes of Bolsover—and was even a little bald. His voice was deep and loud. A stranger would have mistaken him for an inferior master, or, judging from his shabby garments, a common gardener.

Those who knew him were in no danger of making that mistake. No boy was more generally hated. How he came by his name of Cad Jeffreys no one knew, except that no other name could possibly describe him. The small boys whispered to one another that once on a time he had murdered his mother, or somebody. The curious discovered that he was a lineal descendant of Judge Jeffreys, of hanging celebrity. The seniors represented him as a cross between Nero and Caliban, and could not forgive him for being head classic.

The one thing fellows could appreciate in him was his