was not up to the mark, and that Templeton must be
brought up to the mark. Between those points he ruled his straight
line, and that way he meant to go.

If the line cut a snug little set of chums in half, if it turned one or
two settled school customs out of house and home, if it sent one or two
waverers hopelessly over to the wrong side--well, so be it. It was a
pity, especially if the innocent had to suffer with the guilty. But the
good of Templeton was at stake, and woe to the traitor who thought
anything more important than that!

Dear old Ponty, whom Templeton had never loved so much as when it missed
him, had curled his line about in snug, comfortable ins-and-outs, so as
not to disturb anybody. Mansfield didn't think himself better than
Ponty, whom he loved as a brother. But Mansfield couldn't draw curling
in-and-out lines. He only knew one line, and that was a straight one;
and so, for better or worse, Mansfield called for his map and his ruler,
and dashed into his task.

"Give the little chaps a chance," Ponty had said, in his last will and
testament, and the new Captain of Templeton was willing to make one
little curve, in order to carry out his friend's wish.

On the fourth evening of the term, as the Den was assembled in full
session, for the purpose of swearing in Coote and denouncing the powers
that be, that honourable fraternity was startled out of its never
superabundant wits by an apparition far more terrible than the Templeton
Ghost.

Dick was in the chair at the time, and Heathcote was in the act of
moving a resolution, "That this Den considers all the monitors ought to
be hanged, and hopes they will be," when the Captain of Templeton
suddenly entered the room.

Then fell there a silence on the Den, like to the silence of a kennel of
dogs when the whip of the master cracks! The word "hanged" died half-
uttered on the lips of Heathcote, and Dick slipped aghast from his
eminence. The tongue of Coote clave to the roof of his mouth, and even
Gosse's heart turned to stone in the midst of a "swop." Never did
condemned criminals stand more still, or wax-works more dumb.

Mansfield closed the door behind him, and marched straight to the top of
the room, where stood Dick's vacant chair. Was he going to drive them
out single-handed? Was he going to arrest their leader? Or was he
going to make a speech?

As soon as they perceived he was going to do neither the first nor the
second, and knew