Fergus gazed at him in astonishment.

"What!" exclaimed he, "you mean to say you never heard of poor Bubbles?"

"Bubbles? No," replied Jim, looking rather scared.

"Just fancy that!" said Fergus, turning round to us; "never heard of
Bubbles!"

Of course we, who saw what the wag was driving at, looked rather
surprised and a little mysterious.

"What was it?" inquired Jim Sparrow, looking half ashamed of himself.

"Eh? Well, if you never heard it, I'd better not tell you. It's not a
nice story, is it, you fellows?"

"Horrible!" said Lamb, starting at another walnut.

"Oh, do tell me!" cried Jim eagerly, "I'm so fond of stories;" and he
settled himself back in his chair rather uneasily, and tried to look as
if it was all good fun.

"Well, if you do want it I'll tell you; but don't blame me if it upsets
you, that's all!" replied the irrepressible Fergus.

Jim looked as heroic as he could, and wished he had never asked to be
enlightened on the subject of Bubbles.

Fergus refreshed himself with an orange, stuck his feet into the fender,
and began in a solemn voice.

"I suppose, Jim Sparrow, if you have never heard about Bubbles, you
really don't know the history of the school at all. You don't even know
how it came to be called Ferriby?"

"No," responded Jim, keeping his eyes on the fire.

"Ferriby is derived from two Anglo-Saxon words," proceeded Fergus,
"which you may have heard--`fire' and `boy.' Now I'll tell you about
Bubbles!"

There was something very mysterious about the manner in which Fergus
uttered these words, and we listened for what was to come almost as
breathlessly as Jim Sparrow.

"It was early in this century," he said, "that a boy came to this school
called Bubbles. No one knew where he came from. He had no parents, and
never went home for the holidays. He was about your age, Sparrow, and
just your build, and he was in the Lower Fourth."

"I'm going to be moved up this Christmas," interposed Jim hurriedly.

"Are you? So was Bubbles going to be moved up when what I'm going to
tell you happened!"

It was getting dark, and for the last, few minutes all the light in the
room had been caused by a jet of gas in the coals. That jet now went
out suddenly, leaving us in nearly total darkness.

"It was a Christmas Eve. Everybody else had gone home for the holidays,
and Bubbles was the only boy left in the school--Bubbles and a master
whose name I won't mention."

"He was the Dete