t
off to see what his next pleasant little surprise should be. Bolsover,
meanwhile, snarled over the matter in ill-tempered conclaves in the
play-ground.

"It's simple humbug," said Farfield, one of the Sixth. "I defy him to
make me play if I don't choose."

"I shall stand with my hands in my pockets, and not move an inch," said
another.

"I mean to sit down on the grass and have a nap," said a third.

"All very well," said a youngster, called Forrester; "if you can get all
the other fellows to do the same. But if some of them play, it'll look
as if you funked it."

"Who cares what it looks like?" said Farfield. "It will look like not
being made to do what they've no right to make us do--that's all I care
about."

"Well, I don't know," said Pridger, another of the Sixth; "if it came to
the School licking us, I fancy I'd try to prevent that."

"And if it came to the Sixth licking us," said young Forrester, who was
of the audacious order, "I fancy _I'd_ try to put a stopper on that."

There was a smile at this, for the valiant junior was small for his age,
and flimsily built. Smiles, however, were not the order of the day, and
for the most part Bolsover brooded over her tribulations in sulky
silence.

The boys had not much in common, and even a calamity like the present
failed to bring them together. The big boys mooned about and thought of
their lost liberties, of the afternoons in the tuck-shop, of the yellow-
backed novels under the trees, of the loafings down town, and wondered
if they should ever be happy again. The little boys--some of them--wept
secretly in corners, as they pictured themselves among the killed and
wounded on the terrible football field. And as the sharp October wind
cut across the play-ground, they shuddered, great and small, at the
prospect of standing there on Saturday, without coats or waistcoats, and
wondered if Frampton was designedly dooming them to premature graves.

A few, a very few, of the more sensible ones, tried to knock up a little
practice game and prepare themselves for the terrible ordeal. Among
these were two boys belonging to the group whose conversation the reader
has already overheard.

One of them, young Forrester, has already been introduced. Junior as he
was, he was a favourite all over Bolsover, for he was about the only boy
in the school who was always in good spirits, and did not seem to be
infected with the universal dry-rot of the place. He was