afterwards?"

"Now."

"Hunter, go and get a cane from my study."

Trembling with fear, Gordon heard Hunter's feet ring down the stone
passage, saw him running across to the studies by the old wall. There
was silence again; then the sound of feet; Hunter returned.

"Come out here, Caruthers."

It hurt tremendously; he went back wishing he had taken the hundred
lines. But the others thought it amazingly brave of him. Lovelace minor,
handsome, debonair, a swashbuckler in the teeth of authority, came up
afterwards and said:

"Damned plucky of you. My brother's a bit of an ass at times."

It was not really plucky, it was merely the fear of doing the wrong
thing. But the House thought that, after all, there might be something
in at least one of those wretched new kids. One or two people looked at
him almost with interest that night in hall.

That was Gordon's first step. Afterwards things were not so hard.
Mansell began to think him rather a sport, as well as an indispensable
aid to classical studies, and Mansell counted for something. Meredith
smiled at him one day.... A public School was not such a bad hole after
all. And his cup of happiness seemed almost running over when one
afternoon after a game of rugger he overheard Lovelace minor say to
Hunter:

"That kid Caruthers wasn't half bad."

For he saw that the sure way to popularity lay in success on the field;
and because it was the weak as the strong point of his character that he
longed with a wild longing for power and popularity, it was already his
ambition to be some day captain of the House, and to lead his side to
glorious victories.

CHAPTER III: THE NEW PHILOSOPHY

"Of course 'the Bull' may be a jolly fine fellow and all that, but he
does exceed the limit at times."

Lovelace minor was speaking; it was the evening after the Dulbridge
Match. The school had been beaten by twenty-seven points to three, by a
much faster and heavier side. Meredith had been ill and could not play.
Lovelace major had sprained his ankle in the first half, and though he
had gone on playing was very little use. The match had all along been a
foregone conclusion. But "the Bull" had lost his temper entirely.

Hunter, Mansell and Jeffries, a Colt, who ran a good chance of getting
his House cap the next term, were discussing the matter. Gordon, who had
come in to do Thucydides, was sitting in the background, a little shy
and very interested.

"Is it true," said Jeff