d. "It's all his look," Tom used
to say to East, "that frightens fellows. Don't you remember, he never
said anything to us my first half-year for being an hour late for
locking-up?"

The next time that Tom came before him, however, the interview was of
a very different kind. It happened just about the time at which we have
now arrived, and was the first of a series of scrapes into which our
hero managed now to tumble.

The river Avon at Rugby is a slow and not very clear stream, in which
chub, dace, roach, and other coarse fish are (or were) plentiful
enough, together with a fair sprinkling of small jack, but no fish worth
sixpence either for sport or food. It is, however, a capital river for
bathing, as it has many nice small pools and several good reaches for
swimming, all within about a mile of one another, and at an easy twenty
minutes' walk from the school. This mile of water is rented, or used to
be rented, for bathing purposes by the trustees of the School, for the
boys. The footpath to Brownsover crosses the river by "the Planks," a
curious old single-plank bridge running for fifty or sixty yards into
the flat meadows on each side of the river--for in the winter there
are frequent floods. Above the Planks were the bathing-places for the
smaller boys--Sleath's, the first bathing-place, where all new boys
had to begin, until they had proved to the bathing men (three steady
individuals, who were paid to attend daily through the summer to prevent
accidents) that they could swim pretty decently, when they were allowed
to go on to Anstey's, about one hundred and fifty yards below. Here
there was a hole about six feet deep and twelve feet across, over which
the puffing urchins struggled to the opposite side, and thought no small
beer of themselves for having been out of their depths. Below the Planks
came larger and deeper holes, the first of which was Wratislaw's, and
the last Swift's, a famous hole, ten or twelve feet deep in parts, and
thirty yards across, from which there was a fine swimming reach right
down to the mill. Swift's was reserved for the sixth and fifth forms,
and had a spring board and two sets of steps: the others had one set of
steps each, and were used indifferently by all the lower boys, though
each house addicted itself more to one hole than to another. The
School-house at this time affected Wratislaw's hole, and Tom and East,
who had learnt to swim like fishes, were to be found there as regular