per on which he had been writing,
"you will post this upon the board. And I warn you that any further
dereliction of duty on your part brought to my notice will entail very
much more severe consequences."

Mechanically Haviland took the paper, containing of course the notice of
his suspension, and could hardly believe his eyes. This is what he
read:

"Haviland. Prefect.

"Fifteen hundred lines (of Virgil). For gross neglect of duty. Gated
till done.

"Nicholas Bowen, D.D., Headmaster."

The great bound of relief evolved by the respite of the heavier penalty
was succeeded in his mind by resentment and disgust as he realised the
magnitude of this really formidable imposition. The Doctor had left the
desk and the room, and now the whole gathering was pouring forth to the
outer air again. Not a few curious glances were turned on Haviland to
see how he took it: the two condemned juniors, however, being surrounded
by a far more boisterously sympathetic crowd--those who had been swished
before undertaking, with a hundredfold wealth of exaggeration, to
explain to these two, who had not, what it felt like, by way of
consolation.

"What's he given you, Hav?" said Medlicott, a fellow prefect, and rather
a chum of the principal victim's, looking over the notice. "That all!
You've got off cheap, I can tell you. We reckoned it meant suspension--
especially as Nick has a down on you."

"Nick," be it observed, was the inevitable name by which the redoubtable
headmaster was known among the boys. It had started as "Old Nick," but
the suggestion diabolical had been sacrificed to brevity.

"That all!" echoed Haviland wrathfully. "Fifteen hundred's a howling
stiff impos, Medlicott. And it really means two thou, for the old brute
always swears about a third of your stuff is so badly written you've got
to do it over again. It's a regulation time-honoured swindle of his.
And--just as the egg-season is getting at its best! It's too beastly
altogether."

Haviland was an enthusiastic egg-hunter, and had a really fine
collection. In the season he lived for nothing else, every moment of
his spare time being given up to adding to it. Of course he himself
frequently transgressed the laws of trespass, but he was never known to
bring a junior to book for doing so--on the contrary, he was always
careful to look the other way if he suspected the presence of any such.

Now, having fixed the hateful notice to the board