be going up to
Hall to see what the orders of the day _are_?"

"Look at Shields," said Mr. Spence. "He might be posing for a statue
to be called 'Despair!' He reminds me of Macduff. _Macbeth_, Act
iv., somewhere near the end. 'What, all my pretty chickens, at one
fell swoop?' That's what Shields is saying to himself."

"It's all very well to make a joke of it, Spence," said Mr. Shields
querulously, "but it is most disturbing. Most."

"Exceedingly," agreed Mr. Wain.

The bereaved company of masters walked on up the stairs that led to
the Great Hall.

CHAPTER XI

THE CONCLUSION OF THE PICNIC

If the form-rooms had been lonely, the Great Hall was doubly, trebly,
so. It was a vast room, stretching from side to side of the middle
block, and its ceiling soared up into a distant dome. At one end was a
dais and an organ, and at intervals down the room stood long tables.
The panels were covered with the names of Wrykynians who had won
scholarships at Oxford and Cambridge, and of Old Wrykynians who had
taken first in Mods or Greats, or achieved any other recognised
success, such as a place in the Indian Civil Service list. A silent
testimony, these panels, to the work the school had done in the world.

Nobody knew exactly how many the Hall could hold, when packed to its
fullest capacity. The six hundred odd boys at the school seemed to
leave large gaps unfilled.

This morning there was a mere handful, and the place looked worse than
empty.

The Sixth Form were there, and the school prefects. The Great Picnic
had not affected their numbers. The Sixth stood by their table in a
solid group. The other tables were occupied by ones and twos. A buzz
of conversation was going on, which did not cease when the masters
filed into the room and took their places. Every one realised by this
time that the biggest row in Wrykyn history was well under way; and
the thing had to be discussed.

In the Masters' library Mr. Wain and Mr. Shields, the spokesmen of the
Common Room, were breaking the news to the headmaster.

The headmaster was a man who rarely betrayed emotion in his public
capacity. He heard Mr. Shields's rambling remarks, punctuated by Mr.
Wain's "Exceedinglys," to an end. Then he gathered up his cap and
gown.

"You say that the whole school is absent?" he remarked quietly.

Mr. Shields, in a long-winded flow of words, replied that that was
what he did say.

"Ah!" said the headmaster.

There was a silence.