the whole story: he told it simply and well, duly
emphasising the Biblical aspect.

"Berney has left the matter with the prefect," said Moore, who was
suffering tortures from a half-thwarted desire to laugh.

"You'll have to pay for the jugs next term. Randall wants you to be
kept back, but Berney wouldn't hear it. Anyhow, it's been a grave
breach of discipline" (here he saw the impenetrable solemnity of
Neave's face and almost broke down), "grave breach of discipline. Yes.
You're to have four each."

Martin sighed with relief, for he had expected eight. They were taken
to the house gym, where space was ample, and with all four prefects at
work the business was soon over. They were even allowed to keep on
their dressing-gowns. Never had swiping been so farcical or so
inefficient. When they were all back in their cubicles Spots came in.

"I'd have given a great deal," he said, "not to have been a pre
to-night. It seems to me that we have scored off Randall's.
Gentlemen, I congratulate you, and I sincerely hope that no one has
been hurt by our recent ministration."

They assured him that they had not suffered. And then, because they
were all going away very early the next morning, it was decided, with
Spots's permission, to abandon sleep. Gideon had to make a speech and
offer thanks for the public revenge: and stories were told interminably.

Martin, as he lay half asleep, came to the conclusion that life's
burden was exquisite. It wasn't only that the holidays began
to-morrow: the night's achievement had been perfect. There is
something essentially satisfying to human nature in the lavish
destruction of property: with joy we watch the havoc wrought by the
cinema comedian or the pantomime knockabout, and with joy the patron of
fairs smashes the bottles in a rifle-range. Martin revelled in the
thought that forty pitchers lay shattered and shimmering on the zinc
roof below him. And now, more than ever, he felt the pleasures of
comradeship. Randall's had been humiliated: Berney's had triumphed.
It was for him far the most significant fact of his first term that he
had taken part in an enterprise worthy to be recounted for ever in
Berney's. He was proud of his dormy, for it had worked as one man.
Above all, he was proud of Neave, the contriver, the leader of men.
Even now he was saying:

"We've put it across them, the swine."

Then Spots said: "For Gideon and the Lord. It was a great notion. Who
th