the chapel bell began to toll.

"No, that's all just now. You can come and clear up after breakfast,
and if you've got nothing to do after morning school, you can come and
take a bat down at the nets, while I bowl."

At the very least Heathcote had expected to be horrified, when this
terrible ogre did speak, by a broadside of bad language; and he felt
quite bewildered as he recalled the brief conversation and detected in
it not a single word which could offend anybody. On the contrary,
everything had been most proper and considerate, and the last invitation
coming from a first eleven man to his new fag was quite gratuitously
friendly.

"I don't think he's so bad," he remarked to Dick, as they went from
chapel to breakfast.

"All I know is," said Dick, "Cresswell was asking me if it was my chum
who had been drawn by Pledge, and when I told him, he told me I might
say to you, from him, that you had better be careful not to get too
chummy with the 'spider;' and the less you hang about his study the
better. I don't think Cresswell would say a thing like that unless he
meant it."

"I dare say not," said Heathcote. "But I wish to goodness some one
would say what it all means. I can't make it out."

After breakfast he repaired to his lord's study, and cleared the table.

"Well," said Pledge. "What about cricket?"

"Thanks, awfully," said the fag, "I'd like it."

"All serene. Come here as soon as school is up." Which Heathcote did,
and was girt hand and foot with pads, and led by his senior down into
the fields, where for an hour he stood gallantly at the wickets, swiping
heroically at every ball, and re-erecting his stumps about once an over,
as often as they were overturned by the desolating fire of the crack
bowler of Templeton.

A few stragglers came up and watched the practice; but Heathcote had the
natural modesty to know that their curiosity did not extend to his
batting, gallant as it was. Indeed, they almost ignored the existence
of a bat anywhere, and even failed to be amused by the gradual
demoralisation of the fag who wielded it, under the sense of the eyes
that were upon him.

"Pledge is on his form this term," said Cresswell, one of the onlookers,
to his friend Cartwright.

"Tremendously," said Cartwright. "Grandcourt won't stand up to it, if
it's like that on match day. Who's the kid at the wicket?"

"His new fag--poor little beggar!"

"It's a pity. Poor Forbes was just like him a co