g back again, and the only sounds at
last were the hurried run of the delinquents who had been 'run in' to
the detention room, the slow footsteps of some of the masters, and the
brooms of the old ladies who were cleaning up.

Such was the case at St. Peter's when this story begins. The stream of
boys with shiny black bags had poured out through the gate and swelled
the great human river; some of them were perhaps already at home and
enlivening their families with the day's experiences, and those who
had further to go were probably beguiling the tedium of travel by
piling one another up in struggling heaps on the floors of various
railway carriages, for the entertainment of those privileged to be
their fellow-passengers.

Halfway down the main corridor I have mentioned was the 'Middle-Third'
class-room, a big square room with dingy cream-coloured walls, high
windows darkened with soot, and a small stained writing-table at one
end, surrounded on three sides by ranks of rugged seasoned forms and
sloping desks; round the walls were varnished lockers with a number
painted on the lid of each, and a big square stove stood in one
corner.

The only person in the room just then was the form-master, Mark
Ashburn; and he was proposing to leave it almost immediately, for the
close air and the strain of keeping order all day had given him a
headache, and he was thinking that before walking homeward he would
amuse himself with a magazine, or a gossip in the masters' room.

Mark Ashburn was a young man, almost the youngest on the school staff,
and very decidedly the best-looking. He was tall and well made, with
black hair and eloquent dark eyes, which had the gift of expressing
rather more than a rigid examination would have found inside him--just
now, for example, a sentimental observer would have read in their
glance round the bare deserted room the passionate protest of a soul
conscious of genius against the hard fate which had placed him there,
whereas he was in reality merely wondering whose hat that was on the
row of pegs opposite.

But if Mark was not a genius, there was a brilliancy in his manner
that had something very captivating about it; an easy confidence in
himself, that had the more merit because it had hitherto met with
extremely small encouragement.

He dressed carefully, which was not without effect upon his class, for
boys, without being overscrupulous in the matter of their own costume,
are apt to be critica