'skies,'--I
mean by the roughs--and got terribly knocked about. When the news came
to us I was up College, and the fellows had just come back from the
water, so of course we all sallied out to rescue them."

"Did it not occur to you, Williams, that there is a body called the
police, whose duty it is to interfere in disgraceful uproars of this
sort?"

"If we had waited for the police, sir," Williams said, "half the School
would not have been fit to take their places in form again before the
end of the term."

"It does not appear to me," Dr. Litter said, "that a great many of them
are fit to take their places at present. I can scarcely see Norris's
eyes; and I suppose that boy is Barkley, as he sits in the place that he
usually occupies, otherwise, I should not have recognised him; and
Smart, Robertson, and Barker and Barret are nearly as bad. I suppose you
feel satisfied with yourselves, boys, and consider that this sort of
thing is creditable to you; to my mind it is simply disgraceful. There!
I don't want to hear any more at present; I suppose the whole School is
in the same state. Those of you who can see had better go back to School
and prepare your Demosthenes; those who cannot had best go back to their
boarding-houses, or up College, and let the doctor be sent for to see if
anything can be done for you."

The doctor had indeed already been sent for, for some seven or eight of
the younger boys had been so seriously knocked about and kicked that
they were unable to leave their beds. For the rest a doctor could do
nothing. Fights were not uncommon at Westminster in those days, but the
number of orders for beef-steaks which the nearest butcher had received
on the previous evening had fairly astonished him. Indeed, had it not
been for the prompt application of these to their faces, very few of the
party from the fields would have been able to find their way up School
unless they had been led by their comrades.

At Westminster there was an hour's school before breakfast, and when
nine o'clock struck, and the boys poured out, Dr. Litter and his
under-masters held council together.

"This is a disgraceful business!" Dr. Litter said, looking, as was his
wont, at some distant object far over the heads of the others.

There was a general murmur of assent.

"The boys do not seem to have been much to blame," Mr. Richards
suggested in the cheerful tone habitual to him. "From what I can hear it
seems to have been a plan