A series of thefts had been committed, thefts of school-books. A boy would leave his books down on a window-sill, or even in a class-room, and when he came to get them again, one would perhaps be missing. I had never lost anything myself, and knew nothing of what was going on till the afternoon when the matter was divulged to the entire school. It was not far from three o’clock, I remember, the hour when we broke up for the day, and I was in one of the English class-rooms, where, every Monday, if you liked to pay half-a-crown a term extra, you had the advantage of a lesson in elocution from Mr. (or was it Professor?) Lennox. Professor Lennox was a fat, pale, absurd little man, with a high-pitched tenor voice that struck against the drum of your ear like the blow of a stick. He waxed his moustache, and greased his hair into carefully arranged, solid-looking locks, while his skin, by some natural process, greased itself. Professor Lennox was an amateur of fancy trousers, of coloured waistcoats, of large breast-pins, of spats with pearl buttons, and of rings more striking than precious. To-day the whole class――some fifty or sixty boys――was reading after him, line by line, a poem from Bell’s “Elocution.” “In arms, / the Aust / rian phal / anx stood, A liv / ing wall, / a hum / an wood. Impreg / nable / their front / appears, All hor / rent with / project / ing spears.” Or, as it sounded according to local pronunciation, shared impartially by the professor and the majority of his pupils: “In arms, / the Orst / rian phah / lanx stude, Ah liv / ing wall, / ah hue / man wude. Imprag / nable / their front / appears, All hoar / rent with / projact / ing spears.”