nd John fought for his body, while he looked on, an absurd state of
affairs, never--as John reflected in his waking hours--likely to happen
in real life. Of all boys Caesar seemed to be the best equipped to fight
his own battles, and to take, as he would have put it, "jolly good care
of himself."

After the first of the football house-matches, Scaife got his "fez" from
Lawrence, the captain of the House Eleven, and the only member of the
School Eleven in Dirty Dick's. Some of the big fellows in the Fifth
seized this opportunity to "celebrate," as they called it. Scaife was
popular with the Fifth because--as John discovered later--he cheerfully
lent money to some of them and never pressed for repayment. And
Scaife's getting his "fez" before he was fifteen might be reckoned an
achievement. Caesar, in particular, could talk of nothing else. He
predicted that the Demon would be Captain of both Elevens, school
racquet-player, and bloom into a second C. B. Fry.

John, upon this eventful evening, soon became aware of a shindy. It
happened that Rutford was giving a dinner-party, and extremely unlikely
to leave the private side of the house. John heard snatches of song,
howls, and cheers. Ordinarily Lawrence (in whose passage the shindy was
taking place) would have stopped this hullabaloo; but Lawrence was
dining with his house-master, and Trieve, an undersized, weakly
stripling, lacked the moral courage to interfere. John was getting a
"con" from Trieve when an unusually piercing howl penetrated the august
seclusion.

"What _are_ they doing?" asked Trieve, irritably.

John hesitated. "It's the Fifth," he blurted out. "They've got Scaife in
there, you know."

"Oh, indeed! Scaife is an excuse, is he, for this fiendish row? Go and
tell Scaife I want to see him."

John looked rather frightened. He felt like a spaniel about to retrieve
a lion. And scurrying along the passage he ran headlong into the Duffer,
to whom he explained his errand.

"Phew-w-w!" said that young gentleman. "I'd sooner it was you than me,
Verney. They're pretty well ginned-up, I can tell you."

John tapped timidly at the door of the room whence the songs and
laughter proceeded. Then he tapped again, and again. Finally, summoning
his courage, he rapped hard. Instantly there was silence, and then a
furtive rustling of papers, followed by a constrained "Come in!"

John entered.

Most of the boys--there were about six of them--gazed at him in
stupefact