. The
two talked perhaps less than usual, and when they did it was about
ordinary school topics.

No reference was made either then or for a long while afterwards to the
events of the evening. And yet Oliver and Wraysford, somehow, seemed
more than ever drawn together, and to understand one another better
after this than had ever been the case before.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

GUINEA-PIGS AND TADPOLES ON STRIKE.

If anything had been required to make the "strike" of the Guinea-pigs
and Tadpoles a serious matter, the "affair of Greenfield senior's right
foot" undoubtedly had that effect. The _eclat_ which that heroic
exploit lent to the mutiny was simply marvellous. The story was told
with fifty exaggerations all over the school. One report said that the
whole body of the monitors had besieged the Fourth Junior door, and had
been repulsed with heavy slaughter. Another declared that Oliver had
been captured by the fags, and branded on the soles of his feet with a G
and a T, to commemorate the emancipation of the Guinea-pigs and
Tadpoles; and a third veracious narrative went so far as to say that the
Upper Fifth and several members of the Sixth had humbly come and begged
forgiveness for their past misdeeds, and were henceforth to become the
fags of their late victims.

True or untrue as these stories were, any amount of glory accompanied
the beginning of the strike, and there was sufficient sense of common
danger to unite the youngsters in very close bonds. You rarely caught a
Guinea-pig or a Tadpole alone now; they walked about in dozens, and were
very wide awake. They assembled on every possible occasion in their
room, and fortified their door with chairs and desks, and their zeal
with fiery orations and excited conjurations. One wretched youth who
the first evening had been weak enough to poke his master's fire, was
expelled ignominiously from the community, and for a week afterwards
lived the life of an outcast in Saint Dominic's. The youngsters were in
earnest, and no mistake. Stephen Greenfield, as was only natural, did
not altogether find cause for exultation over the event which led to the
strike. For a whole day he was very angry on his brother's account, and
threatened to stand aloof from the revolution altogether; but when it
was explained to him this would lead to a general "smash-up" of the
strike, and when it was further explained that the fellows who caught
hold of his big brother's right foot