o the state of affairs.

So Drummond had given him away, he thought. Probably he had told Linton
the whole story the moment after he, Sheen, had met the latter at the
door of the study. And perhaps he was now telling it to the rest of the
house. Of all the mixed sensations from which he suffered as he went to
his dormitory that night, one of resentment against Drummond was the
keenest.

Sheen was in the fourth dormitory, where the majority of the day-room
slept. He was in the position of a sort of extra house prefect, as far
as the dormitory was concerned. It was a large dormitory, and Mr
Seymour had fancied that it might, perhaps, be something of a handful
for a single prefect. As a matter of fact, however, Drummond, who was
in charge, had shown early in the term that he was more than capable of
managing the place single handed. He was popular and determined. The
dormitory was orderly, partly because it liked him, principally because
it had to be.

He had an opportunity of exhibiting his powers of control that night.
When Sheen came in, the room was full. Drummond was in bed, reading his
novel. The other ornaments of the dormitory were in various stages of
undress.

As Sheen appeared, a sudden hissing broke out from the farther corner
of the room. Sheen flushed, and walked to his bed. The hissing
increased in volume and richness.

"Shut up that noise," said Drummond, without looking up from his book.

The hissing diminished. Only two or three of the more reckless kept it
up.

Drummond looked across the room at them.

"Stop that noise, and get into bed," he said quietly.

The hissing ceased. He went on with his book again.

Silence reigned in dormitory four.

VI

ALBERT REDIVIVUS

By murdering in cold blood a large and respected family, and afterwards
depositing their bodies in a reservoir, one may gain, we are told, much
unpopularity in the neighbourhood of one's crime; while robbing a
church will get one cordially disliked especially by the vicar. But, to
be really an outcast, to feel that one has no friend in the world, one
must break an important public-school commandment.

Sheen had always been something of a hermit. In his most sociable
moments he had never had more than one or two friends; but he had never
before known what it meant to be completely isolated. It was like
living in a world of ghosts, or, rather, like being a ghost in a living
world. That disagreeable experience of being