lowly to his feet.

Dangle reported, when he got back to his house, that argument had been
hopeless. Yet he meant to take it out of his adversary some other way.

But if the principals in the quarrel were inactive, their adherents on
either side took care to keep up the feud.

The Modern juniors especially, who felt very sore at the indignity put
upon their house, took up the cudgels very fiercely. Secretly they
admitted that Dangle had cut rather a poor figure, and that they could
have made a much better job over the impounded football than he had by
his interference. But that had nothing to do with the conduct of the
enemy, whom they took every opportunity of defying and deriding.

"There go the sneaks," shouted Lickford, as the four Classic juniors
paraded arm in arm across the Green. "Who got licked by our chap and
had to squeal for a prefect to come and help them? Oh my--waterspouts!"

"Ya--_how now_--_oh no, not me_!" Percy shouted for the special benefit
of Fisher minor.

"Look at them! They daren't come our side. Cowards!--daren't come on
to our side of the path," chimed in Cash.

"Look at their short legs," called Ramshaw; "only useful for cutting
away when they see a Modern."

"Who got licked on the hands for cheating at Elections, and blubbed like
anything!" put in Cottle.

The four heroes walked on, hearing every word and trying to appear as if
they did not. They spoke to one another with forced voices and
mechanical smiles, and did their best not to be self-conscious in the
matter of their legs.

But as the defiance grew bolder in proportion as they walked further,
Wally said--

"I say, this is a drop too much. We can't stand this, eh?"

"No; the cads!" chimed in the other three.

"Tell you what," said Wally, "it wouldn't be a bad joke to have a punt-
about with their football right under their noses, would it?"

"How if they bag it?"

"Bother!--we must chance that."

"I say," said Ashby, "if we could bag their boots first!"

"Can't do that; but we might wait till they're in their class after
breakfast in the morning. They go in half an hour before us. I know,
they all sit near the window, and are squinting out at everybody that
passes. Won't they squirm?"

Next morning therefore at early school, as Percy and Company sat huddled
at their desks in the Modern class-room, biting their pens, groaning
over their sums, and gazing dismally from the window all at the same
time, t