So, by
rule immemorial, were the contents of the hampers. And so, as they
discovered to their cost, were the luckless new boys who had to-day
tumbled for the first time headlong into the whirlpool of public school
life.

Does some one tell me he never heard of Fellsgarth? I am surprised.
Where can you have been brought up that you have never heard of the
venerable ivy-clad pile with its watch-tower and two wings, planted
there, where the rivers Shale and Shargle mingle their waters, a mile or
more above Hawkswater? My dear sir, Fellsgarth stood there before the
days when Henry the Eighth, (of whom you may have possibly heard in the
history books) abolished the monasteries and, some wicked people do say,
annexed their contents.

There is very little of the old place standing now. A piece of the wall
in the head-master's garden and the lower buttresses of the watch-tower,
that is all. The present building is comparatively modern; that is to
say, it is no older than the end of the Civil Wars, when some lucky
adherent to the winning side built it up as a manor-house and disfigured
the tower with those four pepper-castors at the corners. Successive
owners have tinkered the place since then, but they cannot quite spoil
it. Who can spoil red brick and ivy, in such a situation?

Not know Fellsgarth! Have you never been on Hawkswater then, with its
lonely island, and the grey screes swooping down into the clear water?
And have you never seen Hawk's Pike, which frowns in on the fellows
through the dormitory window? I don't ask if you have been up it. Only
three persons, to my knowledge (guides and natives of course excepted),
have done that. Yorke was one, Mr Stratton was another, and the
other--but that's to be part of my story.

First-night, as I have said, was a specially "go-as-you-please" occasion
at the school. Masters, having called over their roll, disappeared into
their own quarters and discreetly heard nothing. Dames, having received
and unpacked the "night-bags," retired elsewhere to wrestle with the big
luggage. The cooks, having passably satisfied the cravings of two
hundred and fifty hungry souls, and having removed out of harm's way the
most perishable of the crockery, shrugged their shoulders and shut
themselves into the kitchens, listening to the noise and speculating on
the joys of the coming term.

What a noise it was! Niagara after the rains, or an express train in a
tunnel, or the north