What perverse instinct tells them when to strike? How do they learn to break the crystal mood so unerringly? Why do they hate the mystery so much? * * * * * Long before he was fifteen George was living a double life—one life for school and home, another for himself. Consummate dissimulation of youth, fighting for the inner vitality and the mystery. How amusingly, but rather tragically he fooled them. How innocent-seemingly he played the fine healthy barbarian schoolboy, even to the slang and the hateful games. Be ye soft as doves and cunning as serpents. He’s such a _real_ boy, you know—viz., not an idea in his head, no suspicion of the mystery. “Rippin’ game of rugger to-day, Mother. I scored two tries.” Upstairs was that volume of Keats, artfully abstracted from the shelves. * * * * * A double row of huge old poplars beside the narrow brook swayed and danced in the gales, rustled in the late spring breeze, stood spirelike heavy in July sunlight—a stock-in-trade of spires without churches left mysteriously behind by some mediæval architect. Chestnut trees hung over the walks built on the old town walls. In late May after rain the sweet musty scent filled the lungs and nostrils, and sheets of white and pink petals hid the asphalt. In summer the tiled roofs of the old town were soft deep orange and red, speckled with lemon-coloured lichens. In winter the snow drifted down the streets and formed a tessellated pattern of white and black in the cobbled market-place. The sound of footsteps echoed in the deserted streets. The clock bells from the Norman tower, with its curious bulbous Dutch cupola, rang so leisurely, marking a fabulous Time. * * * * * Said the gardener: “It’s a rum thing, Master George, them rabbits don’t drink, and they makes water; and the chickens don’t make water, but they drinks it.” Insoluble problem, capricious decrees of Providence. * * * * * Confirmation classes. “You’ll have to go and see old Squish.” “What’s he say to you?” “Oh, he gives you a lot of jaw, and asks you if you know any smut.” In the School Chapel. Full-dress Preparation Class for Confirmation. The Head in academic hood and surplice entered the pulpit. Whispers sank to intimidated silence, dramatically prolonged by the hawk-faced man silently bullying the rows of immature eyes. Then in slow, deliberate, impressive tones: “Within ten years one half of you boys will be DEAD!” Moral: prepare to meet Thy God, and avoid smut. But did he know, that blind prophet? Was he inspired, that stately hypocrite?