life again. Nothing was changed. The same talk, the same
interests, all the old things the same. Only he was altered. He felt as
if he wanted to stand on the Abbey tower, and shout aloud that the
School was wasting its opportunities, and was struggling blindly in the
dark, following will-o'-the-wisps. And yet, for all that, he would not
have Lovelace, or Mansell or any other of his friends the least bit
different. He did not know what he wanted. It was better to let them go
on as they were. As it had been, it would be. He could not do much, and
at the moment he decided that, whatever he might think or feel, he would
outwardly remain the same. The world was not going to look at his soul.
He would go on as he had begun, putting things behind him as he outgrew
them, and as they appeared childish to him. Only a very few should ever
see him as he really was. The rest would not understand him, they would
think him strange, unnatural; and he did not want that.

The first few days passed quickly. The entrance of Ferrers, the new
master, into the placid Fernhurst atmosphere caused a mild sensation.
The school first saw him walking across the courts after the masters'
meeting on the first day of term. His walk was a roll; he talked at the
top of his voice; his left arm sustained a pile of books; his right arm
gesticulated wildly.

"Good Gawd," said Tester, "what a bounder."

"Maybe, but he's the sort of man to wake up the school," said
Betteridge.

"Isn't it rather like applying a stomach-pump to a man who is only fit
for a small dose of Eno's Fruit Salt?"

"_Nous verrons._"

And in the bustle of a new term Ferrers was forgotten.

Gordon was in the Sixth, and its privileges were indeed sweet. He felt
very proud as he sat in the same room with Harding, a double-first, and
head of the House, and with Hazelton, the captain of the House. Though
it was an ordeal to go on to "con" before them, it was very magnificent
to roll down to the football field just before the game began without
attending roll.

"I say, Caruthers," Lovelace would yell across the changing-room, "do
buck up; it's nearly twenty-five to three, and roll is at a quarter to."

"I don't go to roll," came the lordly answer.

And he felt the eyes of admiring juniors fixed on him. It was sheer joy,
too, to wear the blue ribbon of the Sixth Form and to carry a
walking-stick; to stroll into shops that were to the rest of the school
out of bounds; to go to the ar