The great bound of relief evolved by the respite of the heavier penalty was succeeded in his mind by resentment and disgust as he realised the magnitude of this really formidable imposition. The Doctor had left the desk and the room, and now the whole gathering was pouring forth to the outer air again. Not a few curious glances were turned on Haviland to see how he took it: the two condemned juniors, however, being surrounded by a far more boisterously sympathetic crowd--those who had been swished before undertaking, with a hundredfold wealth of exaggeration, to explain to these two, who had not, what it felt like, by way of consolation. "What's he given you, Hav?" said Medlicott, a fellow prefect, and rather a chum of the principal victim's, looking over the notice. "That all! You've got off cheap, I can tell you. We reckoned it meant suspension-- especially as Nick has a down on you." "Nick," be it observed, was the inevitable name by which the redoubtable headmaster was known among the boys. It had started as "Old Nick," but the suggestion diabolical had been sacrificed to brevity. "That all!" echoed Haviland wrathfully. "Fifteen hundred's a howling stiff impos, Medlicott. And it really means two thou, for the old brute always swears about a third of your stuff is so badly written you've got to do it over again. It's a regulation time-honoured swindle of his. And--just as the egg-season is getting at its best! It's too beastly altogether." Haviland was an enthusiastic egg-hunter, and had a really fine collection. In the season he lived for nothing else, every moment of his spare time being given up to adding to it. Of course he himself frequently transgressed the laws of trespass, but he was never known to bring a junior to book for doing so--on the contrary, he was always careful to look the other way if he suspected the presence of any such. Now, having fixed the hateful notice to the board nailed to the wall for such purposes, he got out a Virgil and sat down to begin his odious task. The big schoolroom was empty save for a few who were under like penalty with himself. What a lovely afternoon it was, and he would have had nearly an hour and a half, just time to go over and secure the two remaining eggs in that sparrow-hawk's nest in the copse at the foot of the down--a programme he had mapped out for himself before this grievous misfortune had overtaken him. Now some other fellow would find them, or they would be "set" and useless before he could get out again. "Gated till done." Half the sting of the penalty lay in those abominable words--for it meant that no foot could be set outside the school gates until the whole of it was completed. "I say, Haviland. We're no end sorry." The interruption proceeded from the two smaller culprits, predestined to the rod on the morrow. Haviland looked up wrathfully. "Sorry, are you, you young sweeps? So am I--sorry I didn't `sock' your heads off."