He found himself wondering whether, if this came to pass, fellows would think he were just such another as Slade, who had been captain of cricket when he himself was a junior and whom the Grey Man had sacked. At least Slade had had a chance. To be judged in three days by a man who had never seen him before in his life did not give him a dog’s chance. It seemed pretty incredible that any fellow could be condemned like that, but that the fellow in question should be himself was very nearly unthinkable. To Toby it was not unthinkable. If he had judged Dr Roe aright the new Head was a man whose first opinion was his last, and who, rather than have to confess himself in the wrong, would stick to a bad judgment against all argument, upholding it through thick and thin to the end. It was clear that he believed in impressing those under him with swift and irrevocable decisions, thereby instilling into them discipline of a kind that made those who had to be judged by him afraid to take their chance, and which consequently kept them on good behaviour. There was another reason, too, why he would be a very difficult man to quarrel with. He was new to the school, and he was the type of man who would always be able to defeat those who really loved Harley by making the whole school and the school’s good reputation suffer for the misdeeds of any one individual. Something of this foreboding must have shown in Toby’s face, and Rouse saw it. At last he spoke. “What is it that’s gone wrong, sir?” said he. “Does he really think I’d be a dud as a captain—or is it that he just takes me for a general waster? What is it makes him think it, any way? Surely it’s not just because I bumped into him with a table?... I would have apologised, as a matter of fact, only as I say I thought it was the man who comes to wind up the clocks, and he’s such a disagreeable old bogey that I didn’t trouble.... He ought to have looked where he was going. A man’s got no right to shoot out of the wall just as you’re going by with furniture.” “It isn’t that at all,” said Toby. “That’s only an additional proof, to his mind, that what he thinks of you is right. There’s some yarn about a ticket in the train. _You_ didn’t tear up a new boy’s ticket, did you?” Rouse considered a moment. “Ticket?” said he at last. “Why, yes, I tore up _one_. What about it? It wasn’t the right one.” He began to explain. “Anyway,” said Toby, “it seems that it was the same fellow who laughed such a lot at the footer game—the fat boy we pulled out to play. And the Head’s idea is that throughout that game he was terrified of you because you’re a proper bully.”