per from the table,
tossed it across to his friend. It was a letter signed by most of the
prefects, suggesting that he should send in his resignation.

"Humph!" said Fletcher; "that's a nice sort of a round robin, don't you
call it? Well, what are you going to do?"

"Oh, I shall resign and have done with it. I'm sick of having to
masquerade about as a good boy. I mean to do what I like."

"Pooh!" returned the other. "Now that you are a prefect, I wouldn't
give up all the privileges and the right to go out and come in when you
like just because a strait-laced chap like Allingford chooses to take
offence at something you do. They can't force you to resign unless they
go to the doctor, and they won't do that. I know what I'd do: I'd tell
them pretty straight to go and be hanged, and keep their sermonizing to
themselves."

Thurston turned on the speaker with a sudden burst of anger.

"Oh yes!" he exclaimed; "you're always saying you'd do this and do that,
but when the time comes you turn tail and sneak away. Look here: you
were the one who proposed going into the Black Swan this morning, and
when young Mouler said Allingford was coming, you slipped out of the
back door and left us to face the shindy."

"Well," returned the other, laughing, "I thought you chaps were going to
bolt too. I hopped over the wall at the back into the field, and waited
there for about a quarter of an hour, and then, as no one came, I made
tracks home."

"That's all very fine. You took precious good care to save your own
bacon; you always do."

"Oh, go on!" answered Fletcher, rising from his chair; "you're in a wax
to-night. Well, ta, ta! Don't you resign."

This little passage of arms was not the first of the kind that had taken
place between Fletcher and Thurston, and it did not prevent a renewal of
their friendship on the morrow.

The latter, following either his own inclination or the advice of his
chum, decided not to resign his position as a prefect, and in a few
days' time the majority of the school had wellnigh forgotten the
fracas at the Black Swan.

Among those in high places, however, the affair was not so easily
overlooked. The big fellows kept their own counsel, but it soon became
evident that Thurston was being "cut" and cold-shouldered by the other
members of the Sixth; while he, for his part, as though by way of
retaliation, began to hob-nob more freely than ever with boys lower down
in the school and of de