for the combatants consisted not only of fifth form boys who were allowed to arrange sparring-matches among themselves, but of lower boys who were expected to box against anybody who might be chosen as their opponent by lot, or more probably at the discretion of Tracy and his friends. These considerations, however, Mr. Selby mentally supplied; they were not part of the story as told to him. What he learnt from Gerald was that the company had assembled on Sunday afternoon in one of the largest rooms of the house; the tables had been pushed back, a ring had been formed, an immense assortment of boxing-gloves of various sizes and colours had been produced; Tracy and Vansittart, acting at once as seconds and umpires, had seated themselves, with towels and sponges in their hands, on chairs at opposite extremities of the ring; two lower boys who had been told off to begin the boxing had divested themselves of their coats and waistcoats, donned the gloves, and sparred a couple of rounds amidst as much applause as was deemed compatible with the secrecy of the proceedings, when the door was suddenly and quietly opened, and in walked--Mr. Brandiston. A meteorite falling from the sky would not have created deeper consternation than the appearance of the house master at that time among the boys of his own house. Mr. Brandiston surveyed the scene with an air of terrible but repressed indignation. ‘And this,’ he said at last, ‘on a Sunday afternoon in _my_ house!’ It was but the work of a moment for him to take the names of the boys who were present. ‘Go to your rooms, all of you,’ he said, ‘and remain there (except during chapel) for the rest of the day. I will see you all at nine o’clock to-morrow morning.’ Then, turning to the seconds and umpires, he added, ‘You, Tracy and Vansittart, are, I suppose, the ringleaders in this disgraceful affair; pick up these gloves and carry them at once to my study.’ Slowly the two boys, their arms laden with boxing-gloves, made their way to the study, where they deposited the gloves on the floor in a rude pyramidal heap like the pile of cannon-balls at an arsenal. The other boys, none venturing to speak a word, dispersed to their rooms. When all had gone out, Mr. Brandiston shut the door. The echoes of his footsteps as he strode along the passage rang in the boys’ ears. It was remarked after chapel that evening that some of the boys in Mr. Brandiston’s house looked unusually pale. The interview with Mr. Brandiston next morning, the reporting of the guilty boys to the head master--Mr. Brandiston reported them all, but recommended the lower boys, as being only reluctant accessories, to mercy--the stern rebuke and severe sentence of the head master, belong to the secret history of St. Anselm’s. But in the house the question was, How had old Brandiston got to know about the boxing?