CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE.

THE FINAL FRACAS.

Harpour, and all who, like him, had long been endeavouring to undermine
the authority which was the only safeguard to the morality of the
school, felt themselves distinctly baffled. Mackworth had been put to
utter rout by Bliss, and though he was almost bursting with dark spite,
would not venture to do much; Jones had become a perfect joke through
the whole school, and was constantly having white hen's feathers and
goose-feathers enclosed to him in little envelopes until he was half mad
with impotent wrath; Harpour himself had been made very decidedly to
swallow the leek of public humiliation; and as for Wilton, he began to
feel rather small.

Tracy again had openly deserted them. After the interview with Power,
Harpour had abused him roundly as a turncoat, and he had told his former
associates that he was sorry to have had anything to do with their
machinations; that they were going all wrong, and were ruining the
school, and that he at any rate felt that he had done mischief enough
already, and meant to do no more. This proof of their failing influence
exasperated them greatly. Harpour threatened, and Mackworth said all
the pungent and insulting things he could, contemptuously mimicking all
Tracy's dandiacal affectations. Tracy winced under this treatment; high
words followed, and after a scene of noisy altercation, Tracy broke with
his former "party," and after the quarrel spoke to them no more.

Dr Lane, too, had now recovered from his fever, and returned to the
school. When the reins were in his strong hands, the difference was
soon perceived. The abuses which had crept in during his absence were
quietly and firmly rectified, and all tendencies to insubordination were
repressed with a stern and just decision which it was impossible to
gainsay or to resist. The whole aspect of things altered, and, lonely
as he was among the Noelites, even Charlie Evson began to like Saint
Winifred's better, and to feel more at home in its precincts.

Still, those who were rebelliously inclined were determined not to give
in at once, and anxiously looked out for some opportunity in which they
could have Kenrick on their side. If they could but secure this, they
felt tolerably confident of giving the monitors a rebuff, and of
carrying with them that numerous body in the school who had been taught
under their training to resist authority on every possible occasion.

The opportun