minds of the
lads who are sitting on the long benches of the King's School,
Canterbury.

As a whole, however, these have not great reason for sadness. Not more
than a third of them are boarders, and the rest, who have in truth,
for the last week, begun to be tired of their holidays, will, when
they once get out of school, and begin to choose sides for football,
be really glad that the term has again commenced.

"So your brother is not coming back again, Archer?" one of the boys
said to a lad of some fifteen years old, a merry, curly-haired fellow,
somewhat short for his age, but square-shouldered and sturdy.

"No. He is expecting in another six months to get his commission, and
is going up to town to study with a coach. My father has lodged the
money for him, and hopes to get him gazetted to his old regiment, the
33d."

"What is he going to a coach for? There is no examination, is there?
And if there was, I should think he could pass it. He has been in the
sixth for the last year."

"Oh, he is all right enough," Archer said. "But my father is sending
him to an army man to get up military drawing and fortification. Dad
says it is of no use his going on grinding here at Greek and Latin,
and that he had much better spend the time, till he gets his
commission, in learning something that may be of use to him. I wish I
had done with Latin and Greek too, I'm sure they'll never be of any
use to me, and I hate them."

At this moment the conversation between the boys was abruptly broken
off by Archer being called up by the class master.

"Archer," he said, looking up from the papers on the desk before him,
"these verses are disgraceful. Of all in the holiday tasks sent in,
yours appears to me to be the worst."

"I'm very sorry, sir," Jack Archer said, "I really tried hard to do
them, but somehow or other the quantities never will come right."

"I don't know what you call trying hard, Archer, but it's utterly
impossible, if you had taken the trouble to look the words out in
the Gradus, that you could have made such mistakes as those here."

"I don't know, sir," Jack answered. "I can do exercises and
translations and all that sort of thing well enough, but I always
break down with verses, and I don't see what good they are, except
for fellows who want to write Latin verses for tombstones."

"That has nothing to do with it," the master said; "and I am not going
to discuss the utility of verses with you. I shall report