ment
five hundred boys poured out, flooding the staircases and passages,
shouting, scuffling, and laughing, and throwing off by one easy effort
the restraint and gravity of the last six hours.

The usual rush and scramble ensued. Some boys, taking off their coats
and tucking up their sleeves as they ran, made headlong for the
playground. Some, with books under their arms, scuttled off to their
studies. The heroes of the Sixth stalked majestically to their
quarters. The day boarders hurried away to catch the train at Maltby.
A few slunk sulkily to answer to their names in the detention-room, and
others, with the air of men to whom time is no object and exertion no
temptation, lounged about in the corridors with hands in pockets,
regarding listlessly the general stampede of their fellows, and
apparently not knowing exactly what to do with themselves.

Among these last happened to be Bullinger of the Fifth and his
particular friend Ricketts, who, neither of them having any more
tempting occupation, were comfortably leaning up against the door of the
Fourth junior class-room, thereby making prisoners of some twenty or
thirty youngsters, whose infuriated yells and howls from within appeared
to afford the two gentlemen a certain languid satisfaction.

"Open the door! do you hear?" shrieked one little treble voice.

"All right!" piped another. "I know who you are, you cads. See if I
don't tell Dr Senior!"

"Oh, please, I say, I shall lose my train!" whimpered a third.

"Wait till I get out; see if I don't kick your shins!" howled a fourth.

It was no use. In vain these bantams stormed and raved, and entreated
and blubbered. The handle would not turn, and the door would not yield.
Mr Bullinger and his friend vouchsafed no reply, either to their
threats or their supplications, and how long the blockade might have
lasted it is impossible to say, had not a fresh dissension called the
beleaguerers away. A cluster of boys at a corner of the big corridor
near the main entrance attracted their curiosity, and suggested a
possibility of even more entertainment than the goading into fury of a
parcel of little boys, so, taking advantage of a moment when the
besieged had combined, shoulder to shoulder, to make one magnificent and
desperate onslaught on to the obdurate door, they quietly "raised the
siege," and quitting their hold, left the phalanx of small heroes to
topple head over heels and one over another on to the ston