Of course their places would quickly be filled up, for heroic souls and talented minds are common enough products of British soil. Infatuated adherents of Disraeli, Gladstone, and Salisbury are apt to fancy that chaos must come when they have gone from their posts. Yet the old state coach rumbles along pretty much as it did in the days of former drivers. The ocean nibbles away at sea-coasts, and encroaches every year in some parts, while it retires from others in the same proportions. Continents have been submerged, and ancient cities buried under the brine; but other continents, cities, and nations have risen and taken the work of civilisation upon them. The earth has not become a fraction smaller, the ocean has not increased by so much as a drop of water. Heroes have risen and carved their names on the monument of history, but mankind has not suffered by their passing away. It benefited, perchance, through their living, as the grain-fields benefit by the passing rains; yet as the moisture returns to the clouds, and comes down again and again, so do great deeds repeat themselves amongst men as in nature. The drop of rain is nothing after it has done its work; the man is of no more consideration after the emergency has passed for which his strength was produced. For a time the renown of those three champions would hover over Shebourne Academy. The acts of the new claimants would be criticised and compared with what had been done before by those doughty heroes. Then the hour would arrive when their successors appeared to overtop them in the eyes of the young censors; then they would fade into oblivion with the majority, and be remembered by a few as demi-gods. In every school there are minds formed to lead and natures made to admire. Wisely, the majority of mankind are those who exist for the present, and trouble themselves neither with the past nor the future. Their hero is the one who serves their interests for the time. Thus mankind goes on, trampling the road smoother which old footsteps have partly made, leaving the dreamers and the regretters to linger on the side pathways. Filled with hope and laden with their prizes, the three boys bade farewell to their old life, and set forth to interview the present arbitrator of their lives, Mr Jabez Raymond--the man who held the sinews of war. Ned had written to this gentleman, and in his reply Mr Raymond gave them a warm invitation to visit him and consult over matters at his place. Mr Jabez Raymond was, as we have already stated, not a family man, but he had a good practice in the cathedral town of Abbotsmore, about one hundred and thirty miles from Shebourne.