n-basin on
its edge, so as to lean against it. Having extremely enjoyed this part
of the proceedings, they went to look at the theatricals again, the boys
being highly delighted at Upton's appearance among them.

They at once made Eric take a part in some very distant reminiscences of
Macbeth, and corked his cheeks with whiskers and mustachios to make him
resemble Banquo, his costume being completed by a girdle round his
night-shirt, consisting of a very fine crimson silk handkerchief, richly
broidered with gold, which had been brought to him from India, and which
at first, in the innocence of his heart, he used to wear on Sundays,
until it acquired the soubriquet of "the Dragon." Duncan made a superb
Macbeth.

They were doing the dagger-scene, which was put on the stage in a most
novel manner. A sheet had been pinned from the top of the room, on one
side of which stood a boy with a broken dinner-knife, the handle end of
which he was pushing through a hole in the middle of the sheet at the
shadow of Duncan on the other side.

Duncan himself in an attitude of intensely-affected melodrama, was
spouting--

"Is this a dagger which I see before me?
The handle towards me now? come, let me clutch thee."

And he snatched convulsively at the handle of the protruded knife; but
as soon as he nearly touched it, this end was immediately withdrawn and
the blade end substituted, which made the comic Macbeth instantly draw
back again, and recommence his apostrophe. This scene had tickled the
audience immensely, and Duncan, amid shouts of laughter, was just
drawing the somewhat unwarrantable conclusion that it was:

"A dagger of the mind, a false creation."

when a sudden grating, followed by a reverberated clang, produced a dead
silence.

"Cave," shouted Eric, and took a flying leap into his bed. Instantly
there was a bolt in different directions; the sheet was torn down, the
candles dashed out, the beds shoved aside, and the dormitories at once
plunged in profound silence, only broken by the heavy breathing of
sleepers, when in strode--not Mr Rose or any of the under-masters--but
Dr Rowlands himself!

He stood for a moment to survey the scene. All the dormitory doors were
wide open; the sheet which had formed the stage curtain lay torn on the
floor of Number 7; the beds in all the adjoining rooms were in the
strangest positions; and half-extinguished wicks still smouldered in
several of the sconces. Every boy