deuce of a row."

There was a shriek of laughter. Jeffries was always in a row; and he
always exaggerated its importance.

"Don't laugh. It's no damned joke. I've got bunked."

Silence suddenly fell on the group.

"But ... what the hell have you been doing?"

"Chief's found out all about me and Fitzroy, and I've got to go!"

"But I never thought there was really anything in that," said Gordon. "I
thought----"

"Oh, well, there was. I know I'm an awful swine and all that----Oh, it's
pretty damnable; and the Three Cock, too! I believe I should have got my
House cap!... I wasn't so dusty to-day--and I heard Armour say, as he
came off the field----Damn, what the bloody hell does it matter what
Armour said? It's over now. I just got across for a minute to see you
men.... I said I wanted a book.... Lord, I can't believe it...."

When he stopped speaking there was again a dead silence. None of the
three had been brought face to face with such a tragedy before. Never,
Gordon thought, had the Greek idea of Nemesis seemed so strong.

Hunter broke the silence.

"What are you going to do now?"

"I don't know. I shall go home, and then, I suppose, I shall have to go
to France or Germany, or perhaps some crammer. I don't know or care ...
it's bound to be pretty rotten...."

He half smiled.

"My God, and it's damned unfair," Mansell said suddenly. "There are
jolly few of us here any better than you, and look at the bloods, every
one of them as fast as the devil, and you have to go just because----Oh,
it's damned unfair."

Then Jeffries' wild anger, the anger that had made him so brilliant an
athlete, burst out: "Unfair? Yes, that's the right word; it is unfair.
Who made me what I am but Fernhurst? Two years ago I came here as
innocent as Caruthers there; never knew anything. Fernhurst taught me
everything; Fernhurst made me worship games, and think that they alone
mattered, and everything else could go to the deuce. I heard men say
about bloods whose lives were an open scandal, 'Oh, it's all right,
they can play football.' I thought it was all right too. Fernhurst made
me think it was. And now Fernhurst, that has made me what I am, turns
round and says, 'You are not fit to be a member of this great school!'
and I have to go. Oh, it's fair, isn't it?"

He dropped exhausted into a chair. After a pause he went on:

"Oh, well, it's no use grousing. I suppose if one hits length balls on
the middle stump over square leg'