The decision arrived at by the club meeting speedily came to the ears of the recalcitrant Moderns, and by no means pleased them. They had expected at least that some one would propose that they should be met half-way, and appealed to, for the sake of the School, to abandon their attitude. That would have given them an opportunity of figuring in an heroic light before Fellsgarth, and showing how, for the general good, they could afford even to overlook the slight which had been put upon them. But now, so far from that, they figured as the party who had wrecked the School clubs for the sake of a petty pique, and in their absence had been quietly deposed along with every one else from office and privilege, and left looking uncommonly foolish and uncommonly ridiculous. Yorke himself hardly realised, when he made his downright motion, that he was dealing the hardest blow possible at the mutiny. A mutiny is all very well as long as there is some one to mutiny against. But now, even this luxury was denied them. Naturally the wrath of Clapperton and his friends fell on the traitors in their own camp whose presence at the meeting had made it impossible to discredit it as entirely one-sided in its composition. That Corder would go, every one was prepared for. He had laid up for himself yet one more rod in pickle, and should punctually taste its quality. But the mutiny of the juniors was a surprise. No one imagined that their threats at revolt were anything more than the ordinary bluster in which these young braves notoriously dealt. Had they sinned in ignorance it would have mattered less. But they had gone to the meeting in deliberate defiance of their captain's order, and in the face of his warning as to what the consequences of disobedience would be. The discipline of the house was at an end if a flagrant act of insubordination like this was to be allowed to pass unnoticed. Besides, if allowed to spread, other fellows would go over to the enemy, and the "moral" effect of the strike would be at an end. A peremptory summons was therefore dispatched to Percy and his friends to appear before the prefects of their house that same evening. "That all?" inquired Percy of the middle-boy who brought the message. "We hear you. You needn't stop." "I'll tell him you'll come?" said the messenger. "I don't mind what you tell him. Cut out of our room, that's all. We aren't particular, me and my chaps; but we draw the line at louts." "He says if you don't come--" "What's to prevent him saying anything he likes? Look here, young Gamble," (Gamble was at least two years the senior of any boy present), "if you don't cut your sticks, they'll be cut for you. So there." Gamble gave a general invitation to the party to come and try to tamper with his sticks, and departed with a final caution as to the desirability of obeying their captain. "Lick," said Percy, when he had gone, "how much grub have we got in the room?"