Amid the babel of tongues there was one man who maintained what was, for him, an attitude of unusual reserve. This was Mr. Chowdler, the strong man of Chiltern. Mr. Chowdler owed his reputation for strength, not to any breadth of view or depth of sympathetic insight, but to a sublime unconsciousness of his own limitations. Narrow but concentrated, with an aggressive will and a brusque intolerance of all who differed from him, he was a fighter who loved fighting for its own sake and who triumphed through the sheer exhaustion of his enemies; and a Term in which he did not engage in at least one mortal combat was to him a blank Term. A tall man, with broad shoulders, round head, thin sandy hair, and full lips, he caught the eye in whatever company he might be, and his resonant voice arrested attention. At golfing centres, in the holidays, he was not always a very popular figure. But his confident manner impressed parents, and his was considered _the_ house at Chiltern. People often wondered why he had never stood for headmasterships or sought a wider scope for the exercise of power. In reality he had never felt the need. He had so completely identified himself with Chiltern that it never even occurred to him to leave it; and his had for many years been the master mind that shaped the destinies of the school. In saying this we are not forgetting the existence of Dr. Gussy. But Dr. Gussy, though he had been the titular chief for nearly a quarter of a century, had long ceased to be the ruling spirit. In vulgar phrase, he had allowed Mr. Chowdler to “run him,” and it was generally supposed to be weariness of bondage rather than of power which had induced him to resign before the completion of his twenty-fifth year of office. In appearance he was a complete contrast to his formidable lieutenant. Small and rather fragile, with silver-white hair and a refined, delicately moulded face that suggested Dresden china, he was the type of the old-fashioned scholar. Though there was nothing commanding in his personality it was none the less distinguished, and the thinness of a high-pitched, and sometimes almost squeaky, voice was atoned for by the perfection of his articulation. In his younger days he had taken a prominent place among the champions of the Oxford Movement, and, if he had not become a headmaster, he might have been notorious as a theologian; indeed, his commentary on the Epistle of St. Clement is admitted by all to be a remarkable work. Fathers of Chiltern boys loved to hear him read the lessons, and mothers frequently remarked, “What a lovely face!” But he was by nature too refined and sensitive to cope successfully with the robust methods of Mr. Chowdler, and, after struggling fitfully for some years, he had purchased comparative peace by an irritable submission. Mrs. Chowdler, an obtuse little woman who worshipped her husband and imagined that everybody at Chiltern shared her admiration, used to say that “Harry” was the headmaster’s better