"Only about a dozen fellows, sir. The usual lot who come on bikes,
sir."

"None of the boarders?"

"No, sir. Not a single one."

"This is extraordinary."

Mr. Spence pondered.

"Well," he said, "you two fellows had better go along up to Hall. I
shall go to the Common Room and make inquiries. Perhaps, as you say,
there is a holiday to-day, and the notice was not brought to me."

Mr. Spence told himself, as he walked to the Common Room, that
this might be a possible solution of the difficulty. He was not a
house-master, and lived by himself in rooms in the town. It was
just conceivable that they might have forgotten to tell him of the
change in the arrangements.

But in the Common Room the same perplexity reigned. Half a dozen
masters were seated round the room, and a few more were standing. And
they were all very puzzled.

A brisk conversation was going on. Several voices hailed Mr. Spence as
he entered.

"Hullo, Spence. Are you alone in the world too?"

"Any of your boys turned up, Spence?"

"You in the same condition as we are, Spence?"

Mr. Spence seated himself on the table.

"Haven't any of your fellows turned up, either?" he said.

"When I accepted the honourable post of Lower Fourth master in this
abode of sin," said Mr. Seymour, "it was on the distinct understanding
that there was going to be a Lower Fourth. Yet I go into my form-room
this morning, and what do I find? Simply Emptiness, and Pickersgill II.
whistling 'The Church Parade,' all flat. I consider I have been hardly
treated."

"I have no complaint to make against Brown and Willoughby, as
individuals," said Mr. Spence; "but, considered as a form, I call them
short measure."

"I confess that I am entirely at a loss," said Mr. Shields precisely.
"I have never been confronted with a situation like this since I
became a schoolmaster."

"It is most mysterious," agreed Mr. Wain, plucking at his beard.
"Exceedingly so."

The younger masters, notably Mr. Spence and Mr. Seymour, had begun to
look on the thing as a huge jest.

"We had better teach ourselves," said Mr. Seymour. "Spence, do a
hundred lines for laughing in form."

The door burst open.

"Hullo, here's another scholastic Little Bo-Peep," said Mr. Seymour.
"Well, Appleby, have you lost your sheep, too?"

"You don't mean to tell me----" began Mr. Appleby.

"I do," said Mr. Seymour. "Here we are, fifteen of us, all good men
and true, graduates of our Universities, and, a