As anticipated, Scissors headed the poll, and henceforth he was leader of the Opposition. The result was a high political fever. Immediately after breakfast each morning, he rushed round to the library and read through the newspapers. At first he modelled himself upon Winston Churchill, to whom he was supposed to have some facial likeness, but he found he had not the cool self-assumption of his prototype. He found himself more akin to Lloyd George, that Welsh lawyer whose name was as blasphemy to some and holy song to others. The role suited John. He was a born iconoclast. He had the Welshman's gift of stinging epithet, and he surprised himself with the veneer of venom that added lustre to his sentences. He learnt from his prototype the art of swift descent from Parnassus to Limehouse; he punctuated his periods with cheers provoked from the blubber-headed section of his audience; he knew the pathetic touch, the 'lump-in-the-throat' moment, as he called it, and he used them until his opponents were powerless to stem the avalanche of his invective. All this alarmed Mr. Fletcher. He saw his house becoming socialistic. The authority of the prefects was becoming undermined, the junior boys no longer feared the Upper Remove. They frankly stated their dislikes. In one debate they declared their hatred of compulsory cricket with such vehemence that he had to move the closure, whereupon John attacked him as a champion of tyranny, the feeble upholder of bloated tradition. This so alarmed Fletcher that he had a private interview with John, who suggested very skilfully that his overture was a form of corruption. The fact was that John was getting a swollen head. Marsh, whose hornet-like nature delighted in the stinging of authority, encouraged John in his most daring attacks. Vernley, lost in admiration at John's brilliance, worshipped silently and approved without question. The other boys followed in John's path, hardly realising the power of his leadership. The awakening came rapidly from an unseen quarter. It fell like a thundercloud over the sunshine of John's triumph, and he resented his defeat all the more because it was the hand of a friend who brought him low, and his fall had no dignity. It was not intellectual. He would have borne that. It was physical, and he felt sick with shame. Inwardly he was conscious that he had provoked disaster, and most of his anger fell upon himself for being such a fool and not realising the need of tact.