at the opposite end of the dormitory.
"You know very well that Grundy flipped a pen full of ink over me,
and that was why I had to go out and wash my face."

"I know you looked altogether a different fellow
when you came back," returned Jack Vance: "I hardly knew you!"

There was a momentary pause in the discussion, and Bibbs, thinking this
a suitable opportunity for the delivery of his speech, stepped forward,
and took up his stand in the doorway. Hardly, however, had he
pronounced the opening "Ahem! Gentlemen," when a cake of soap, flung by
Maxton, struck him a violent blow in the pit of the stomach, and he was
still rolling and groaning on his bed in the throes of recovering his
lost wind when the prefect arrived to turn out the light.

The occupants of the two dormitories lay down, but not to sleep.

"You mark my word," said Diggory, "as soon as the prefects have gone
down to supper those chaps from over the way'll come across and pay us
out for throwing that soap. We'd better put a chair against the door."

"Look here!" remarked Fletcher junior to his room-mates. "I shouldn't
be at all surprised if Maxton and those other fellows in No. 14 come
over and try to rag us; let's lie awake a bit and listen."

For half an hour all was quiet and still, and the watchers in No. 14
were turning over and preparing to go to sleep, when "Rats" started up,
exclaiming in a whisper, "They're coming! I heard some one in the
passage. There 'tis again! Jump up, you chaps, and let's make a
sortie."

Now, strange to say, an exactly similar alarm had just been given by
Fletcher junior in No. 13, and the reason was simply as follows:--
Mr. Greyling, the master of the Lower Fourth, in walking towards his
bedroom in slippered feet, was seized with a sneezing fit, and halting
just outside the two dormitories, gave vent to his feelings with a loud
"Et-chow!" After a moment's pause he sneezed again, and had hardly
done so before both doors were suddenly flung open, and with a cry of
"Ah, you sneaks!" and another of "Come on, you blackguards!" a crowd of
white-robed figures rushed out, brandishing pillows and startling
Mr. Greyling to such a degree that he exclaimed "Great Scott!" and
dropped his candle.

What followed is too sad to be related in detail. Mr. Greyling
scattered largess in the shape of lines among the crowd, and the next
day the occupants of the two dormitories went about thirsting for each
other's blood.

On Sa