“I seem to see a certain Saturday afternoon. There will be an unwonted calm about the old school. The Head—God bless him!—will be sleeping by the fire. His carpet slippers will be dangling from his toes. His waistcoat will be comfortably loosened.... Suddenly he will wake with a start and he will be struck by the eerie stillness everywhere about him. He will rise and look out of the window. At first he will see nothing. He will climb to a window on the top floor, and then with a kind of telescopic eye he will see everything at once. He will look along every road that leads towards Rainhurst and he will see several small clouds of dust. Dimly he will make out the figures of all kinds and conditions of Harley fellows footing it along at a good pace, some even riding bicycles or getting lifts in carts. He will see the railway station crowded with the chaps who can afford to buy railway tickets. He will see trains on the move with our chaps leaning out and waving coloured handkerchiefs at him. It will be like a Derby day. At last he will send for the bursar. ‘Look here,’ he will say, ‘What is all that commotion? What’s on?’ The bursar will look at him wisely. ‘Didn’t you know?’ he’ll say. ‘There’s a very big match on to-day. The school are playing Rainhurst.’ The only thing I regret,” he added, “is that by going to Rainhurst to play I shall not be able to be present in the Head’s room at that moment.” Saville jumped suddenly forward and flung out his hand. “Look!... Betteridge! He’s walking by the window. I must go and——” He never finished. He just made a delighted gesture of farewell, and was gone. At last Rouse turned again to his companions. “The safety valve is open,” said he. “By to-morrow the welcome whisper should be passing from lip to lip.” * * * * * A careful onlooker casting back his mind in after years to the ten days that intervened between the greatest depth of the school’s dejection and its complete recovery has said that the countenance of the average Harleyan of that day was to him the face of a good barometer showing a steady rise from storm to set-fair by regular upward moves from day to day. From the moment when Rouse, by breaking the news to Saville, had, as it were, thrown that message like a pebble into the pool of Harley’s dejection, the rippling circles of water that showed just where it had sunk spread with almost mathematical precision until the outermost circle had reached the outermost boys in the school. The countenance of the school was, therefore, more than a barometer. It was a graph, showing exactly how far the whisper reached each day.