d against me, of which I was not informed, and I therefore
had no opportunity to challenge it. I was asked before a whole class
of my schoolmates if I had committed the act, and at once denied it.
Without any hearing I was adjudged guilty, and promptly subjected to
the punishment of the day--a good birching. On every occasion on which
we were offered the alternative of detention, we invariably "plumped"
for the rod, and got it over quickly, and, as we considered,
creditably--taking it smiling as long as we could. But that one act of
injustice, the disgrace which it carried of making me a liar before my
friends, seared my very soul. I vowed I would get even whatever it
cost, and I regret to say that I hadn't long to wait the opportunity.
For I scored both the apples and the lie against the punishment before
many months. Nor was I satisfied then. It rankled in my mind both by
day and by night; and it taught me an invaluable lesson--never to
suspect or condemn rashly. It was one of Dr. Arnold's boys at Rugby, I
believe, who summed up his master's character by saying, "The head was
a beast, but he was always a just beast."

At fourteen years of age my brother was sent to Repton, to the house
of an uncle by marriage--an arrangement which has persuaded me never
to send boys to their relatives for training. My brother's pranks were
undoubtedly many, but they were all boyish and legitimate ones. After
a time, however, he was removed at his own request, and sent to
Clifton, where he was head of the school, and the school house also,
under Dr. Percival, the late Bishop of Hereford. From there he took an
open scholarship for Oxford.

It was most wisely decided to send us to separate schools, and
therefore at fourteen I found myself at Marlborough--a school of
nearly six hundred resident boys, on entering which I had won a
scholarship.

CHAPTER II

SCHOOL LIFE

Marlborough "College," as we say in England for a large University
preparatory school, is situated in Wiltshire, in a perfectly beautiful
country, close to the Savernake Forest--one of the finest in all
England. As everything and everybody was strange to me on my arrival,
had I been brought up to be less self-reliant the events of my first
day or two would probably have impressed themselves more deeply on my
memory than is the case. Some Good Samaritan, hearing that I was bound
for a certain house, allowed me to follow him from the station to the
inn--for a ve