does not tell us on which of these two
nights Mr. Bullock died. Such is the casualness of ghost story-tellers.
Lockhart adds that the coincidence made a strong impression on Sir
Walter's mind. He did not care to ascertain the point in his own mental
constitution "where incredulity began to waver," according to his friend,
Mr. J. L. Adolphus.

CHAPTER XVII: THE BOY

As a humble student of savage life, I have found it necessary to make
researches into the manners and customs of boys. Boys are not what a
vain people supposes. If you meet them in the holidays, you find them
affable and full of kindness and good qualities. They will condescend to
your weakness at lawn-tennis, they will aid you in your selection of fly-
hooks, and, to be brief, will behave with much more than the civility of
tame Zulus or Red Men on a missionary settlement. But boys at school and
among themselves, left to the wild justice and traditional laws which
many generations of boys have evolved, are entirely different beings.
They resemble that Polynesian prince who had rejected the errors of
polytheism for those of an extreme sect of Primitive Seceders. For weeks
at a time this prince was known to be "steady," but every month or so he
disappeared, and his subjects said he was "lying off." To adopt an
American idiom, he "felt like brandy and water"; he also "felt like"
wearing no clothes, and generally rejecting his new conceptions of duty
and decency. In fact, he had a good bout of savagery, and then he
returned to his tall hat, his varnished boots, his hymn-book, and his
edifying principles. The life of small boys at school (before they get
into long-tailed coats and the upper-fifth) is often a mere course of
"lying-off"--of relapse into native savagery with its laws and customs.

If any one has so far forgotten his own boyhood as to think this
description exaggerated, let him just fancy what our comfortable
civilised life would be, if we could become boys in character and custom.
Let us suppose that you are elected to a new club, of which most of the
members are strangers to you. You enter the doors for the first time,
when two older members, who have been gossiping in the hall, pounce upon
you with the exclamation, "Hullo, here's a new fellow! You fellow,
what's your name?" You reply, let us say, "Johnson." "I don't believe
it, it's such a rum name. What's your father?" Perhaps you are
constrained to answer "a Duke" or (m