posing figure in his
square cap and flowing gown as he swept up to the great central desk,
and gave the signal for the calling-over to begin.

Haviland, shouting out name after name on his list, did so mechanically,
and his mind was very ill at ease. His conscience was absolutely clear
of any specific offence, but that was no great consolation, for the
Doctor's lynx eye had a knack of unearthing all sorts of unsuspected
delinquencies, prefects especially being visited with vicarious
penalties. That was it. He was going to suffer for the sins of
somebody else, and it was with the gloomiest of anticipations that he
closed his note-book and went up to make his report.

CHAPTER TWO.

THE HEADMASTER.

The Reverend Nicholas Bowen, D.D., headmaster of Saint Kirwin's, ruled
that institution with a sway that was absolutely and entirely despotic.
His aim was to model it on the lines of the greater public schools as
much as possible, and to this end his assistant staff were nearly all
university graduates, and more than half of them in Holy Orders. He was
a great believer in the prefectorial system, and those of the school
selected to carry it out were entrusted with large powers. On the other
hand, they were held mercilessly responsible even for unconscious
failures of duty, and on this ground alone the luckless Haviland had
ample cause for his misgivings.

The outward aspect, too, of the Doctor was eminently calculated to
command the respect of his juvenile kingdom. He was very tall and
strongly built, and half a lifetime of pedagogic despotism had endowed
him with a sternness of demeanour awe-inspiring enough to his charges,
though when turned towards the outside world, as represented by his
clerical colleagues for instance, it smacked of a pomposity bordering on
the absurd. He had his genial side, however, and was not averse to the
cracking of pedagogic jokes, at which he expected the form to laugh. It
is almost unnecessary to add that the form never by any chance
disappointed him.

To-day, however, no trace of such geniality was discernible, nothing but
a magisterial severity in every movement of the massive iron grey head,
a menace in the fierce brown eyes, as in a word, sounding like the
warning bark of an angry mastiff, he ordered the whole school to keep
their places. The whole school did so, and that with a thrill of
pleasurable excitement. There was no end of a row on, it decided, and
as it only co