And there were very few there who, in after days, forgot that strange figure, standing in the back of the room, the light of the high window upon him, his thin figure strung to its tensest, his hand raised, his gaunt cheeks white, his eyes on fire.... “It's lies, all lies!” The words came tumbling out one upon another. “I don't care—I must speak. Ladies and gentlemen,”—he caught his throat for a moment with his hand—“I know that this is no occasion for saying those things, but no one else has the courage—the courage. It is not true what he has been saying”—he pointed a vehement, trembling finger at the white patriarch. “We are unhappy here, all of us. We are downtrodden by that man—we are not paid enough—we are not considered at all—never considered—everything is wrong—we all hate each other—we hate him—he hates us—we are unhappy—it is all hell.” He felt that his voice was quivering. He knew that he was shaking from head to foot. He cried once more querulously, “It is all hell here... hell!” And then, suddenly, with head hanging and his hands dropping hopelessly to his side, he turned and, amidst an intense silence, left the room by the wide doors behind him. There rose, like the murmur of the sea, from the body of the school: “It 's Perrin.” CHAPTER XIV—MR. PERRIN REACHES THE HEART OF HIS KINGDOM I. HE was entirely unconscious of the world about him as he hurried across the green quadrangles to his rooms. He saw no sky, nor flying clouds, nor grass, nor gray buildings. He thought not at all of any effect that his words may have on the people that had heard them; he had no interest in what had happened after he had left the building. The one fact was there before him, that he, Perrin, the despised, the mocked, the rejected, had flung into the midst of them all his bomb. They might hate him now; the governors and the rest might expel him furiously; they might deny indignantly his accusations, but they could not, any longer, ignore him. His little room was strangely cool and gray and quiet. Everything in it watched him with as sedate and respectable an air as though nothing tremendous had happened, the hooks, the old chairs, the little specks of dust floating in the sunlight, and then suddenly something gleaming from beneath the pile of examination papers on the table. He turned the papers over, and there, shining against the old, worn-out tablecloth, was the knife. He stared at it and then very slowly and thoughtfully put it away in a drawer. He did not want it now. He was surprised, amazed, at the indifference with which he looked at it. That morning it had meant so much, now—— It was not Traill that he was going to kill; it was something larger, greater, more sweeping—a system, and at the head of the system, a tyrant.