or membership. The Head of the
School is _ex-Officio_ President.

CHAPTER XIV

_Good Night_

"Good night! Sleep, and so may ever
Lights half seen across a murky lea,
Child of hope, and courage, and endeavour,
Gleam a voiceless benison on thee!
Youth be bearer
Soon of hardihood;
Life be fairer,
Loyaller to good;
Till the far lamps vanish into light,
Rest in the dreamtime. Good night! Good night!"

The last Saturday of the summer term saw the Manor cock-house at
cricket: almost a foregone conclusion, and therefore not particularly
interesting to outsiders. During the morning Scaife gave his farewell
"brekker"[39] at the Creameries; a banquet of the Olympians to which
John received an invitation. He accepted because Desmond made a point of
his so doing; but he was quite aware that beneath the veneer of the
Demon's genial smile lay implacable hatred and resentment. The breakfast
in itself struck John as ostentatious. Scaife's father sent quails, _a
la Lucullus_, and other delicacies. Throughout the meal the talk was of
the coming war. At that time most of the Conservative papers pooh-poohed
the possibility of an appeal to arms, but Scaife's father, admittedly a
great authority on South African affairs, had told his son a fight was
inevitable. More, he and his friends were already preparing to raise a
regiment of mounted infantry. At breakfast Scaife announced this piece
of news, and added that in the event of hostilities he would join this
regiment, and not try to pass into Sandhurst. And he added that any of
his friends who were present, and over eighteen years of age, were
cordially invited to send in their names, and that he personally would
do all that was possible to secure them billets. The words were hardly
out of his mouth, when Caesar Desmond was on his feet, with an eager--

"Put me down, Demon; put me down first!"

And then Scaife glanced at John, as he answered--

"Right you are, Caesar, and if things go well with us, I fancy that we
shall get our commissions in regular regiments soon enough. The governor
had had a hint to that effect. Let's drink success to 'Scaife's Horse.'"

The toast was drunk with enthusiasm.

During the holidays, John saw nothing of Desmond, although they wrote to
each other once a week. John was reading hard with an eye to a possible
scholarship at Oxford; Desmond was playing cricket with Scaife. Later,