the presence of guests,
unless it be some chance sportsman in quest of marsh-fowl, or a
land-agent in quest of rents.

When, therefore, on the 15th of March, 1876, a party of four visitors--the
Rev. Edward Thring, Headmaster of Uppingham School, one of the Trustees
of the school, and two of the masters--were seen mounting the steps of
the porch, it was a sight to make the villagers wonder by what chance so
many guests came to knock at the door in that dead season. Had the wind
blown them hither? It blew a hurricane that day on the bleak coasts of
Cardigan Bay; but it was a shrewder storm yet which had swept this
windfall to the doors of Borth.

The story must be briefly told. On November 2nd, 1875, Uppingham School
was dispersed on account of a fever which had attacked both town and
school, not without fatal casualties. On January 28th, 1876, the school
met again. In the interval the school-houses had been put in complete
sanitary order, and though the efforts made to amend the general drainage
of the town had been only on a small and tentative scale, it was thought
that the school, if secure on its own premises, might safely be recalled,
in spite of remaining deficiencies outside those limits. But, _tua res
agitur_--the term began with three weeks of watchful quiet, and then the
blow fell again. A boy sickened of the same fever; then, after an
interval of suspense, two or three fresh cases made it clear that this
was no accident. An inspection of the town drainage, ordered by the
authorities, revealed certain permanent sources of danger. It was clear
that the interests of school and town, in matters of hygiene as in
others, were not separable; perhaps the best fruit of the sequel has been
the mutual conviction that those interests are one.

Meanwhile the new illustration of this connection of interests had a
formidable significance for the Uppingham masters. Men looked at one
another as those do who do not like to give a name to their fears. For
what could be done? The school could not be dismissed again. How many
would return to a site twice declared untenable? But neither could it be
kept on the spot: for there came in unmistakable evidence that, in that
case, the school would dissolve itself, and that, perhaps, irrevocably,
through the withdrawal of its scholars by their parents from the dreaded
neighbourhood. Already the trickling had begun; something must be done
before the banks broke, and the r