d the room, and the work began in earnest.

About a quarter of an hour later the boys were busy with a Latin
exercise, when silence was broken by a shuffle and an exclamation from
the back desk. "You again, Maxton," said the master, looking up
with a frown. "I suppose you are determined to idle away your time and
remain bottom of the class this term as you were last. I shall put your
name down for some extra work. Let's see," he continued, taking up the
slate: "I appear to have three boys' names down already--'Vance,'
'Mugford,' and 'Trevanock.' What's the meaning of this? This is not
my writing. How came these names here?"

"Please, sir," faltered Mugford, "we put them there ourselves."

"Put them there yourselves! What d'you want to put your names down on
my punishment slate for? I suppose some one told you to, didn't they?"

"Please, sir," answered Diggory warily, "we thought we had to, so that
you might have our names to enter in your mark-book."

There was a burst of laughter, but that answer went a long way towards
setting the Alliance on a good footing with their class-mates.

"That young Trevanock's the right sort," said Maxton, "and so are the
others. I thought they'd sneak about that slate, but they didn't."

Mr. Noaks, junior, on the other hand, was destined to find that he was
not going to carry everything before him at Ronleigh as he had done
among the small fry at Horace House, The Upper Fourth voted him a
"bounder," and nicknamed him "Moke." After morning school he repeated
his attempt to ally himself with his former foes, but the result was
decidedly unsatisfactory.

Down in the box-room, a good-sized apartment boarded off from the
gymnasium, Jack Vance was serving out a ration of plum-cake to a select
party, consisting of his two chums and Carton, when the ex-Philistine
strolled up and joined himself to the group.

"Hullo!" he said, "are you chaps having a feed? D'you remember that
pork-pie we bagged from one of your kids at Chatford? Ha, ha! it was a
lark."

"I don't see it's much of a lark to bag what doesn't belong to you,"
muttered Diggory.

"What's that you say?"

"Nothing for you to hear," returned the other. "I don't know if you're
waiting about here to get some cake, but I'm sure I never invited you to
come."

"Look here, don't be cheeky," answered Noaks. "If you think I want to
make friends with a lot of impudent young monkeys like you, all I can
say is you're jol