him if he
could imagine 'a silly and excitable kid' (which is an excellent
description of Ray) dreaming that he had done what actually was
done.... The Head was incredulous at first, but the doctor talked so
learnedly about the Subliminal Consciousness and Alternating
Personalities that the Head, if only for fear of getting out of his
depth, began to yield. I drove home the advantage by saying that I
believed you didn't generally lie--which was true, wasn't it?"

"Good Lord, no!" I replied.

"Well, it will be some day." Radley rose and strolled to the door.
"Yes, there's been a slump in Rupert Ray recently, but I'm afraid
there'll be a boom in him when he comes back to work, and he'll get
too big for his boots. It's a pity. Good-night."

And though Stanley, as we learnt later, had manfully revealed the
full story of Doe's sufferings at the hands of the prefects, Radley
walked away without giving the young hero one word of admiration.
And as the door shut Doe turned round in his bed, so that his face
was away from me, and maintained a wonderful silence.

CHAPTER V

CHEATING

Sec.1

Time carried us a year nearer the shadow of the Great War. It
brought us to our fourteenth year, at which period Doe's mysterious
intrigue with Freedham still awaited solution, and my Armageddon
with Fillet still languished in a sort of trench-warfare.

It was now that our abominable form took to cheating once a week in
Fillet's class-room. A Roman History lesson left invitingly open the
opportunity to do so. For Fillet's method of examining our
acquaintance with the chapter he had set to be learnt in Preparation
was invariably the same. He asked twenty questions, whose answers we
had to write on paper. He would then tell us the answers and allow
us to correct our own work. After this he would take down our marks.

Now, our form had been organised by the all-powerful statesman,
Pennybet, who had lately been reading the Progressive Papers, into a
Trade Union, of which the President was Mr. Archibald Pennybet. He
had decided (as it is the business of all trade unions to decide)
that we were worked too hard. We must organise to effect an
improvement in the conditions of living. To demand from the Head
Master an instant reduction in the hours of labour didn't seem
feasible to our union of twenty members, but it would be quite easy
by a co-operative effort to modify the extent of our Preparation. At
a mass-meeting of the worke