ring sports. Stafford, dear
fellow that he was, was not a particularly "hot" man at anything, but he
would hold the coat of anyone who asked him, and backed everybody up in
turn, and always cheered the winner as heartily as he condoled with the
loser. Felgate was one of those boys who could do better than they do,
and whose unsteadiness is no one's fault but their own. His ways were
sometimes crooked, and his professions often exceeded his practice. He
meant well sometimes, and did ill very often; and, in short, was just
the kind of fellow for the short-tempered, honest Ainger cordially to
dislike.

Such was the miscellaneous community which Mark Railsford found himself
called upon to govern. It was not worse than a good many masters'
houses, and had even its good points.

And yet just now it was admitted to be in a bad way. The doctor had his
eye on it, and there is nothing more adverse to reform than the
consciousness that one has a bad name. The late master, Mr Moss,
moreover, had notoriously found the place too hot for him, and had given
it up. That again tells against the reputation of a house. And,
lastly, although it had a few good scholars and athletes, who won
laurels for the school, there seemed not enough of them to do anything
for the house, which had steadily remained at the bottom of the list for
general proficiency for several terms.

If you inquired how all this came about, you would hear all sorts of
explanations, but the one which found most favour in the delinquent
house itself was summed up in the single word "Bickers." The origin of
the deadly feud between the boys of Railsford's and the master of the
adjoining house was a mystery passing the comprehension even of such as
professed to understand the ins and outs of juvenile human nature. It
had grown up like a mushroom, and no one exactly remembered how it
began. Mr Bickers, some years ago, had been a candidate for the
Mastership of the Shell, but had been passed over in favour of Mr Roe.
And ever since, so report went, he had been actuated by a fiendish
antipathy to the boys who "kept" in the house of his rival. He had
worried Mr Moss out of the place, and the boys of the two houses, quick
to take up the feuds of their chiefs, had been in a state of war for
months. Not that Mr Bickers was a favourite in his own house. He was
not, any more than Mr Moss had been in his. But any stick is good
enough to beat a dog with, and when Mr B