After Toby’s experience they had not expected a fair hearing; the belief that Dr Roe was going to fight them was now a certainty. The Head turned and moved suddenly towards the window. His curiosity as to what was really happening outside would no longer be denied. He reached the curtain with outstretched hand and tugged it aside. And then in the gathering dusk of late evening he saw what he had to combat. This little upheaval of school life had once seemed to him merely a mole-hill. But he had spoken truly: they had made of it a mountain. As far as the eye could reach there stretched a sea of faces showing above the clear white of schoolboys’ collars, very silent and very still, waiting as if for a signal from within. He stared out upon the scene for thirty seconds and at last he turned. Even in this wide room the silence was tense. Not one of the deputation seemed to be really drawing breath. The new Head faced them sternly, his grim visage more than ever like the face of a bloodhound, his spectacles set firmly upon the broad bridge of his nose. “What does that mean?” he said at last. “Why are all those boys out there? What do they want?” Terence stepped forward boldly. There was the joy of battle in his eyes. “They want Rouse, sir,” said he. “Every mother’s son amongst them—and they are waiting for your answer.” The Head’s eyes hardened till they shone like steel. “Very well,” said he. “Then you may make it known at once.” He paused and looked at each boy in turn, and at last he told them in slow emphatic words how he had planned his answer. CHAPTER X THE WATCHERS Bobbie Carr leaned wearily against the wall with hands thrust deep in his pockets and an expression of the most complete dejection. Except for those deplorable young men who were celebrating their return to school behind the closed doors of Coles’ study, he believed that he was absolutely alone in the whole of Morley’s. Everybody else had gone. In twos and threes and fours they had all passed down the corridor, talking in eager whispers and making emphatic gestures of resolve. To-night the school were meeting to lodge one last gigantic protest against the ways of the new Headmaster in a demonstration that would have weight of numbers solidly behind it and a mighty voice with which to speak. And he was left alone in a passage. It was really awful. His futile office was to stand about outside that hated study and guard it against intruders. What intruders? There was nobody whatever left in the whole house to intrude. All he had to do was to kick his heels about and pretend to be waiting idiotically for a friend.