understand it, and then perhaps shut the book and repeat it very slowly in his deep, smooth voice, so that the magic of beautiful words wove its spell round David’s wondering mind. To-day, on his way to the museum, just as David passed the long French windows of the Head’s study, he stepped out and called him. “So you’ve seen your father off, Blaize?” he asked. “Yes, sir; thank you, sir,” said David, beaming. “Ah! Well, we’ll take a little stroll across the field, you and I, before we begin our English literature.” It was one of those days when Rhadamanthus unbent, when the man who could be so terrible became wholly enchanting, a man not to fear but to love. These days were not common, but when they came they were golden. And now that tremendous person, who had been a rowing-blue at Oxford, who was the incarnation of fate and retribution, laid his arm over David’s shoulder and put aside his terrors. “I had a long talk to your father, David,” he said. “No, no one can hear me call you David; don’t be alarmed; and no doubt he has told you part of what we said, that you are to go up for a scholarship at Marchester next week. Do your best, won’t you, and be a credit, not to me, which doesn’t matter so much, but to yourself. And I told your father I was proud of you, and I meant it. You and I have had what they call words before now, haven’t we? In fact, I’m afraid that sometimes it has come to blows. You have often been most unsatisfactory, idle and careless and disobedient; I dare say there’s not a single school rule that you haven’t broken. But I told your father that I had never found you mean nor bestial. I look upon you as a boy I can trust.” David’s young skin flushed with pleasure, and then went white again with a resolution that frightened himself. “I—I’ve done lots of things you don’t know about, sir,” he said. “I don’t think it’s right you should think me good—I’ve——” The Head stopped, and David’s heart sank into his boots. What an ass he had been to say that! Why not have received this handsome tribute, however undeserved, without disturbing the misplaced faith that prompted it? And yet he knew that he had done it deliberately and because he had to. “Do you wish to tell me about them?” asked the Head. But his voice was still quiet and kind. David seemed to himself to be going mad. He just heard his voice in a quaking whisper say: “Yes, sir.” “Well, then, David, I don’t want to hear about them,” said this astounding man, “though I thank you for wishing to tell me. I feel sure you have broken rules of school often enough, but I don’t think you have broken rules of character. They are much more important, though school rules have got to be kept as well.” Suddenly his grip on David’s shoulder tightened, and his eye fixed itself on the back of a small boy who was sitting on the wire railing at the edge of the field, unconscious of their approach. “Ferrers Minor, I think,” he called out in an awful voice.