urtain very seldom goes up punctually on the first night;
and there had been no dress rehearsal. There was a sound of scuffling
from the door in the cloister which led into the School House studies.
Then came the tread of measured feet. The door opened, and the great
procession entered.

At the head was Gordon in Ferguson's dressing-gown (a great white
confection with pale pink frogs) with a white Colts' cap on his head; he
beat time with a small swagger cane. Then came the trumpeters, Crosbie
and Forbes, who were producing strange harmonies on two pipes that they
had bagged from the armoury. Behind them Mansell walked in corps clothes
and a Second Fifteen cap. He was chanting a low dirge. On each side of
him marched the choristers, Lovelace and Hunter, in white sheets and
enormous psalters that they had borrowed from the chapel. They also sang
in a strange outlandish tongue. But the _piece de resistance_ was the
banner. It consisted of a long piece of white calico on which was
inscribed in red ink: "Up, Up, Oxford. Down with the Cantabs." (Trundle
hailed from Emmanuel.) It was fastened at each end to a hockey stick,
and Fletcher and Collins bore it in solemnly. In the rear, Briault gave
his impressions of a cow being ill. Dyke was the showman.

"I will now present, gentlemen," he began, "my circus of touring
artistes, who are raising a fund for the endowment of the Oxford boating
club. I must beg you all----"

But Trundle cut short the oration. Seizing a cane, he rushed into the
cavalcade of Isis, and smote out full lustily. Pandemonium broke forth.
No battle-field was more rich in groans; no revue chorus produced so
much noise. It took a quarter of an hour to obtain quiet. But at last a
motley crowd sat down to study Francois Coppee.

And then came the _denouement_. It was entirely unexpected and entirely
unrehearsed. There was a knock outside. The door opened and an amazing
apparition appeared on the threshold. Betteridge was in the Sixth. Very
enviously the night before he had listened to the preparations and plans
of the extra French set; cursing inwardly, he had sat down at ten
o'clock to do prose with the Chief. Faintly across the court were borne
the sounds of strife. He groaned within him. Suddenly the Chief stood
up.

"I find I shall have to leave you for a little. Some parents are coming
to interview me. I want you all to return quietly to your studies, and
continue the prose there."

Joyfully the Sixt