sell. "But it doesn't seem quite fair, and I am
damned if I want this book. It looks the most utter rot. I say, shall I
give it to that little kid in Buller's, I forget his name, who was
second? He looks a bit upset. Shall I, I say?"

"Don't be a silly fool, Mansell," said Lovelace major, who happened to
overhear the conversation. "You've just got the only prize you're ever
likely to get for work; stick on to it."

The rest of the day was pure, unalloyed joy to Gordon. He rushed off
after tea to wire the news home; then he sat in the gallery and listened
to the concert. He had expected to enjoy it rather; but the seats were
uncomfortable, the music too classical, and he soon stopped paying any
attention to the choir, and began a long argument with Collins as to the
composition of the Two Cock scrum.

The next morning as the train steamed out of Fernhurst, and he lay back
in the carriage smoking a cigarette, outwardly with the air of a
connoisseur, inwardly with the timid nervousness of a novice, he
reflected that, in spite of the Rev. Rogers, school was a pretty decent
sort of place.

CHAPTER IV: NEW FACES

"I say, it _is_ true; Lovelace major has left."

"Good Lord, no; is it?"

"He's not on the House list?"

"I heard he'd passed into the army at last."

"I wonder who he was sitting next."

"And we shall have that silly ass Armour captain of the House."

"Ye gods!"

A small crowd had gathered in front of the studies on the first night of
the Easter term. Consternation reigned. The almost impossible had
happened. Lovelace major had passed into Sandhurst at his fifth attempt,
and Armour would take his place as house captain. It was a disaster.
Armour was doubtless a most worthy fellow, a thoroughly honest,
hard-working forward. But he had no personality. When he passed by, fags
did not suddenly stop talking, as they did when Clarke or Meredith
rolled past them. The term before, he had not even been a house prefect.
The Three Cock, which had once seemed such a certainty, now became a
forlorn hope.

"It's rotten," said Lovelace minor that night in the dormitory. "My
brother didn't think he had the very ghost of a chance of passing. He'd
mucked it up four times running, only the silly ass had done both the
unseens with "the Bull" the week before, and he was too damned slack to
alter them, and write them down wrong. He always was an ass, my
brother."

Everyone was sorry. Even "the Bull" regarded hi