their pestilential pots.
Meanwhile we snitch their water jugs and empty the water on their
little beds. Then we bring the jugs back here and wait. The windows
on this side of the dormy look out on the zinc roof of Randall's gym:
beyond is the dining-room, where the swine will be guzzling. With
windows open we can easily hear what's going on. When old Toffee
Randall gets up to propose his blighted house" (Neave had in his
excitement sunk from the level of the lay sermon) "I move that we chuck
all the empty jugs on that zinc roof and shout: 'For Gideon and the
Lord.' There ought to be row enough to raise hell. You know what
those roofs are ... and there will be forty pitchers. They won't have
the least notion what the row is till they get upstairs and see their
beds. They'll think it's a private rag of our own, but they'll learn
in due time. Now don't anyone say a word. We've got to keep this to
our dormy or the pre's are bound to find out."

The hurried arrival of Spots, followed by the extinction of the lights,
put an end to further devising of conspiracy. For a long time Martin
lay awake, gazing at the ceiling and turning restlessly from side to
side. Excitement, that terrible mingling of sheer joy and sheer
terror, gripped him, almost physically: as he thought of the splendours
and the perils of to-morrow night he felt as he had felt before when he
was walking down the study passage to the prefects' common-room and
listening to Spots's following tread. What, he wondered, would be the
end of it all? There would be a row, inevitably. They might even be
kept back a day: that would be wretched. But swiping? He could endure
that for the glory of sharing in a rag, a colossal rag with Neave and
Cullen as leaders. Besides he hated Randall's, hated them so bitterly
that the prospect of soaking their beds and smashing their pitchers was
heavenly even at the cost of swipings innumerable. Nowhere is group
feeling more obvious and more powerful than in the world of youth. In
a single term Martin had become so passionately one of Berney's that
his hatred of Randall's and their smudgy type of success made him
quiver with anger. He didn't care a straw for Gideon's nose: nobody
really cared for Gideon's sufferings. They were all linked by the
single bond of hatred.

It was Randall's that mattered ... the swine.

Naturally the last night of term was not distinguished for its
discipline. There was, of course, n