At Saint Dominic's, for reasons best known to the all-wise beings who presided over its management, the principal examinations and "removes" of the year took place not, as in most schools, at the end of the Midsummer term, but at the beginning of the Autumn term, about Michaelmas; consequently now, with the examinations looming in the distance, everybody who had anything to hope for from hard work settled down to study like mad. Cricket was over for the year, and football had not begun. Except boating there was not much doing out of doors, and for that reason the season was favourable for work. Studies, which used to be bear-gardens now suddenly assumed an appearance of respectability and quiet. Books took the place of boxing-gloves, and pens of fencing-sticks. The disorderly idlers who had been in the habit of invading at will the quarters of the industrious were now given to understand they must "kick-up their heels" elsewhere. _They_ might not want to grind, but others did. The idlers of the Fifth, to whom this warning was addressed on every hand, had nothing for it but to obey, and, feeling themselves greatly ill-used, to retire sadly, to some spot where "they could kick-up a row to themselves." Casting about them for such a spot, it happened that Braddy and Ricketts one day lit almost by accident on an old empty study, which some years since had been a monitor's room, but was now empty and tenantless. It at once occurred to these two astute heroes that this would be a magnificent place for boxing-matches. In the other studies one was always banging against the corners of tables, or tripping over fenders, but here there was absolutely nothing, but four bare walls to interfere with anybody. They called in two more friends--Tom Senior and another--who declared it was a splendid find, and the four thereupon took formal possession of their new territory, and inaugurated the event by a terrific eight-handed match. Nothing could have been more satisfactory. The room was well out of the way; the studious ones of the Fifth were spared all annoyance, and the riotous ones had an asylum to go to. No one was a bit the worse for the move; every one, on the contrary, found himself decidedly the better. "Go and kick-up a row in the monitor's room," became quite a common objurgation in the Form, among the diligent; as common, in fact, as "Come along, old man, and have it out in the monitor's room," was among the idlers.