his speech was somewhat weak, and he
relapsed into silence, biting his nails with the unexpressed rage of
limp words.

"You might as well say that the School oughtn't to cheer at a football
match," said Abercrombie the Captain.

"I would say so, if I thought that all the cheerers never expected and
never even intended to play themselves. That's why professional football
is so rotten."

"You were damned glad to get your Third Fifteen cap," Abercrombie
pointed out gruffly.

The laugh that followed this rebuke from the mightiest of the immortals
goaded Michael into much more than he had intended to say when he began
his unlucky tirade.

"Oh, was I?" he sneered. "That's just where you're quite wrong, because,
as a matter of fact, I don't intend to play football any more, if School
Footer is simply to be a show for a lot of wasters. I'm not going to
exert myself like an acrobat in a circus, if it all means nothing."

The heroes regarded Michael with surprize and distaste; they shrank from
him coldly as if his unreasonable outburst in some way involved their
honour. They laughed uncomfortably, each one hiding himself behind
another's shoulders, as if they mocked a madman. The bell for school
rang, and the heroes left him. Michael, still enraged, went back to his
class-room. Then he wondered if Alan would hate him for having made his
uncle's death an occasion for this breach of a school's code of manners.
He supposed sadly that Alan would not understand any more than the
others what he felt. He cursed himself for having let these ordinary,
obvious, fat-headed fools impose upon his imagination, as to lead him to
consider them worthy of his respect. He had wasted three months in this
society; he had thought he was happy and had congratulated himself upon
at last finding school endurable. School was a prison, such as it always
had been. He was seventeen and a schoolboy. It was ignominious. At one
o'clock he waited for nobody, but walked quickly home to lunch, still
fuming with the loss of his self-control and, as he looked back on the
scene, of his dignity.

His mother came down to lunch with signs of a morning's tears, and
Michael looked at her in astonishment. He had not supposed that she
would be much affected by the death of Captain Ross, and he enquired if
she had been writing to Mrs. Ross.

"No, dear," said Mrs. Fane. "Why should I have written to Mrs. Ross this
morning?"

"Didn't you see in the paper?" Michael