of course, rank
ruffianism on the part of a Fifth Form boy; and so, by graduated stages,
he arrived at the Head's study just before lunch, penitent, perturbed,
annoyed with himself and--as the Head said to King in the corridor after
the meal--more human than he had known him in seven years.

'You see,' the Head drawled on, 'Winton's only fault is a certain
costive and unaccommodating virtue. So this comes very happily.'

'I've never noticed any sign of it,' said King. Winton was in King's
House, and though King as pro-consul might, and did, infernally oppress
his own Province, once a black and yellow cap was in trouble at the
hands of the Imperial authority King fought for him to the very last
steps of Caesar's throne.

'Well, you yourself admitted just now that a mouse was beneath the
occasion,' the Head answered.

'It was.' Mr. King did not love Mr. Lidgett. 'It should have been a rat.
But--but--I hate to plead it--it's the lad's first offence.'

'Could you have damned him more completely, King?'

'Hm. What is the penalty?' said King, in retreat, but keeping up a
rear-guard action.

'Only my usual few lines of Virgil to be shown up by tea-time.'

The Head's eyes turned slightly to that end of the corridor where
Mullins, Captain of the Games ('Pot,' 'old Pot,' or 'Potiphar' Mullins),
was pinning up the usual Wednesday notice--'Big, Middle, and Little Side
Football--A to K, L to Z, 3 to 4.45 P.M.'

You cannot write out the Head's usual few (which means five hundred)
Latin lines and play football for one hour and three-quarters between
the hours of 1.30 and 5 P.M. Winton had evidently no intention of trying
to do so, for he hung about the corridor with a set face and an uneasy
foot. Yet it was law in the school, compared with which that of the
Medes and Persians was no more than a non-committal resolution, that any
boy, outside the First Fifteen, who missed his football for any reason
whatever, and had not a written excuse, duly signed by competent
authority to explain his absence, would receive not less than three
strokes with a ground-ash from the Captain of the Games, generally a
youth between seventeen and eighteen years, rarely under eleven stone
('Pot' was nearer thirteen), and always in hard condition.

King knew without inquiry that the Head had given Winton no such excuse.

'But he is practically a member of the First Fifteen. He has played for
it all this term,' said King. 'I believe his Cap should