ld not have looked--
among whom was Jarnley. However, even these latter Saint Kirwin's
managed to lick into very tidy sort of shape.

The situation of the place left nothing to be desired. The school
buildings, long, high-gabled, drawn round two quadrangles, were
sufficiently picturesque to be in keeping with the beautiful pastoral
English scenery amid which they stood--green field and waving woodland
studded with hamlet and spire, undulating away to a higher range of bare
down in the background--all of which looked at its best this fair spring
afternoon, with the young leaves just budding, and the larks, soaring
overhead, pouring forth their volume of song.

As the calling-over bell jangled forth its loud, inexorable note,
upwards of three hundred and fifty boys, of all sorts and sizes, came
trooping towards the entrance from every direction--hot and ruddy from
the playing fields--here and there, an athletic master, in cricket
blazer, amid a group of bigger boys who had been bowling to him; others
dusty and panting after a long round across country in search of birds'
eggs--performed nearly all the time at a run--others again of a less
energetic disposition, cool and lounging, perchance just gulping down
some last morsels of "tuck"--all crowded in at the gates, and the cool
cloisters echoed with a very Babel of young voices as the restless
stream poured along to fill up the big schoolroom. Then might be heard
shouts of "Silence!" "Stop talking there!" "Don't let me have to tell
you again!" and so on--as the prefect in charge of each row of boys
stood, note-book in hand, ready to begin the "calling-over."

"I say, Haviland," said Laughton, the captain of the school, in a low
voice, "you're to go to the Doctor after call-over. I'm afraid you're
in for it, old chap."

"Why? What on earth about? I haven't been doing anything," answered
the other, in genuine surprise--"at least--" he added as a recollection
of the smack on the head he had administered to Jarnley occurred to him.
But no, it couldn't be that, for therein he had been strictly
discharging his duty.

"I don't know myself," rejoined Laughton. "He stopped me as I passed
him in the cloisters just now, and told me to tell you. He was looking
jolly glum too."

Another half-smothered shout or two of "Silence" interrupted them, and
then you might have heard a pin drop as the master of the week entered,
in this case the redoubtable "Head" himself, an im