of the liberality of the 'Head,' small clusters of boys still stood night after night on those old study tables and patiently fried their bacon over the gas. Unfortunately this was not the worst of their misdoings. Besides the appetising smell of the bacon and the delicious aroma of chicory or tea, there was too often a strong flavour of 'bird's-eye' or 'latakia' about the passages. Almost to a man, the school smoked. How it had crept in I don't pretend to know, but the habit had been growing in the school for years until it was almost universal. This was the one thing which our new head-master would not tolerate at any price, and it was pretty well understood throughout the school that his dealings with the first offender detected in the act would be short and severe. About the time of the Loamshire match he had taken to beating up our quarters in person, not, I think, from any desire to detect the smokers in the act, but from a hope that the fear of his coming might act as a deterrent. About a week after Snap Hales's great bowling feat, Fernhall was brewing as usual. The dusk had fairly set in; a crowd of boys were jostling one another with the cans and frying-pans at the great public stoves, and Snap and many others were breaking school-rules as usual in their own studies. Mind, I am pledged to serve up my boys _au naturel_ and not smothered in white sauce, so that if you don't like my menu you had better take warning in time. The bacon had been finished, the hot rolls from the tuckshop had been submitted to digestions which were capable of dealing even with hot rolls and butter, and now Snap Hales, Billy Winthrop, and one Simpson were desperately endeavouring to enjoy, or appear to enjoy, the forbidden pleasures of tobacco. Billy had an elaborately carved meerschaum between his teeth, while Snap lay full length on an extemporised divan, making strange noises and strange faces in his endeavours to get on terms with a 'hubble-bubble.' Billy's jaws ached with the weight of the meerschaum, and Snap was as blown with trying to make his instrument of torture draw as if he had been running the school mile. Simpson was in a corner cutting up some 'sun-dried honeydew,' which he had procured in a cake--'such,' he said, 'as the trappers of the North-West always use.' To tell the truth, he liked 'whittling' at that cake of tobacco with his knife a great deal better than smoking it, for the first two or three whiffs invariably sent a cold chill through his frame and a conviction that, like Mark Twain, he had inadvertently swallowed an earthquake. Suddenly the boys stopped talking; there was a heavy rap at the door, preceded by a vain attempt to open it, and followed by the command, in deep tones, to 'open this door.' 'Nix! by Jove!' whispered Simpson, whiter now than ever with fright. 'Rot!' replied Snap unceremoniously. 'It's only that fool Lane, up to some of his jokes. Go to Bath, Legs,' he added at the top of his voice.