The pent-up fury of the House now broke loose. Everyone swore he would murder Clarke on the last day, bag his clothes, and hold him in a cold bath for half-an-hour. If half of the things that were going to be done on the last day ever happened, how very few heads of houses would live to tell the tale! It is so easy to talk, so very hard to do anything; a head of the House is absolutely supreme. If he is at all sensitive, it is possible to make his life utterly wretched by a silent demonstration of hatred, but if he is at all a man, threats can never mature, and Clarke was a man. During his last days at Fernhurst he was supremely miserable. The House was split up into factions: he himself had no one to talk to except Ferguson and Sandham. But he carried on the grim joke to its completion. In the last week he beat four boys for being low in form, and gave a whole dormitory a hundred lines daily till the end of the term for talking after lights out. The Chief was sorry to lose him; Ferguson would make a very weak head. The future was not too bright. * * * * * "I say, you know, I think I had better get a 'budge' this term." Gordon announced this fact as the Lower Fifth were pretending to prepare for the exam. Mansell protested: "Now don't be a damned ass, my good man; you don't know when you are well off. You stop with old Methuselah a bit longer. He is a most damnable ass, but his form is a glorious slack." "Oh, well, I don't know. I think the Sixth is slacker still. I am going to specialise in something when I get there. I am not quite sure what. But it's going to mean a lot of study hours." At Fernhurst there was a great scheme by which specialists always worked in their studies. To specialise was the dream of every School House boy. It is so charming to watch, from the warm repose of your own study, black figures rushing across the rain-swept courts on the way to their class-rooms (it always rained at Fernhurst), and Gordon was essentially a hedonist. "Yes, I suppose the higher you go up the less work you do," said Mansell. "When I was with old 'Bogus' I used to prepare my lessons sometimes, and, what's more, with a dictionary." "Oh, _Quantum mutatus ab illo_," sighed Gordon.