One stormy night in the early autumn, two years after the events narrated in the last chapter, a group of masters were sitting in their common-room at Deal School. Supper was just concluded; a cheerful fire burned on the hearth, and the crackling of the flames was a pleasing contrast to the roar of the wind and the dashing of the rain without. Two of the masters were playing chess under the light of a lamp, the others were sitting before the fire, smoking and talking. “Well,” remarked Beverly, one of the younger men, noted among his colleagues for his readiness to express an opinion upon any subject in the universe, “what do you think of the Head’s latest departure?” Mr. Roylston pursed his thin close-shaven lips as though he were about to reply, but before doing so he carefully pressed the tobacco into his pipe, and struck a match and applied it. “I don’t know,” he muttered, between the puffs, in rather a high jerky voice, “that it makes very much difference what we think. But I am inclined to characterize it as an arrival rather than a departure.” “It is certainly very much with us,” commented Gray, with an absent-minded glance into the fire. “Well, I predict its speedy extinction,” resumed Beverly. “It is difficult for me to conceive how the Doctor can suppose that Finch will ever get on here. Upon my word, did you ever see such an object?” “Upon _my_ word, I did not,” answered Gray. “But here it certainly is, and in a sense it is bound to get on. I am entrusted with its table manners, if one may speak of what does not exist.” “I believe that Morris is to have it in his house,” said Roylston, looking over at the chess players. “It? who? Oh, you are talking about Finch, eh? Queer little duffer, isn’t he?” “Queer?” murmured Beverly in a tone that spoke volumes of intense pity for the limits of Morris’s vocabulary. “Perhaps you can really tell us something about it, Mr. Morris?” “Nothing much, I’m afraid,” Morris replied. “The Doctor has some special interest,—he’s a trust, I understand, from a very old friend. It is very much up to us, I fancy, to help make things easy for the poor kid. I shall speak to some of the boys in my house about him, and ask them to go out of their way to be a bit decent.” “Speedy execution were the more merciful, I should say,” commented Mr. Roylston, taking a comfortable pull at his pipe. “Nonsense! he’ll make good,” said Morris, a shade of irritation crossing his face, “that is, if we give him half a chance.” “I don’t precisely see why we should be supposed to give him less or more chance than we give to every boy,” said Beverly, a little pompously. “I am sure we all——” “_We_ can’t perhaps,” Roylston rejoined, “but doubtless Mr. Morris, who has the advantage of certain confidential relations with the boys of his house which we do not enjoy, probably can.”