r prayers. He had, he said, for some time entertained the idea of
placing the town out of bounds. He would do so now. No boy, unless he
was a prefect, would be allowed till further notice to cross the town
bridge. As regarded the river, for the future boating Wrykinians must
confine their attentions to the lower river. Nobody must take a boat
up-stream. The school boatman would have strict orders to see that this
rule was rigidly enforced. Any breach of these bounds would, he
concluded, be punished with the utmost severity.

The headmaster of Wrykyn was not a hasty man. He thought before he put
his foot down. But when he did, he put it down heavily.

Sheen heard the ultimatum with dismay. He was a law-abiding person, and
here he was, faced with a dilemma that made it necessary for him to
choose between breaking school rules of the most important kind, or
pulling down all the castles he had built in the air before the mortar
had had time to harden between their stones.

He wished he could talk it over with somebody. But he had nobody with
whom he could talk over anything. He must think it out for himself.

He spent the rest of the day thinking it out, and by nightfall he had
come to his decision.

Even at the expense of breaking bounds and the risk of being caught at
it, he must keep his appointment with Joe Bevan. It would mean going to
the town landing-stage for a boat, thereby breaking bounds twice over.

But it would have to be done.

IX

SHEEN BEGINS HIS EDUCATION

The "Blue Boar" was a picturesque inn, standing on the bank of the
river Severn. It was much frequented in the summer by fishermen, who
spent their days in punts and their evenings in the old oak parlour,
where a picture in boxing costume of Mr Joe Bevan, whose brother was
the landlord of the inn, gazed austerely down on them, as if he
disapproved of the lamentable want of truth displayed by the majority
of their number. Artists also congregated there to paint the
ivy-covered porch. At the back of the house were bedrooms, to which the
fishermen would make their way in the small hours of a summer morning,
arguing to the last as they stumbled upstairs. One of these bedrooms,
larger than the others, had been converted into a gymnasium for the use
of mine host's brother. Thither he brought pugilistic aspirants who
wished to be trained for various contests, and it was the boast of the
"Blue Boar" that it had never turned out a loser. A reputa