Then dinner, conversational and sometimes boisterous, in the Masters' Common-Room, and afterwards, unless it were his evening for taking preparation, an hour at least of silence before the corridors and dormitories became noisy. During this hour he would often sit by the open window in his room and hear the rooks cawing in the high trees and the _clankety-clank_ of the roller on the cricket-pitch and all the mingled sounds and commotions that seemed to him to make the silence of the summer evenings more magical than ever. Often, too, he would hear the sound of the Head's piano, a faint half-pathetic tinkle from below. Half-past eight let loose the glorious pandemonium; he could hear from his room the chiming of the school-bell, and then, softly at first, but soon rising to a tempestuous flood, the tide of invasion sweeping down the steps of the Big Hall and pouring into the houses. Always it thrilled him by its mere strength and volume of sound; thrilled him with pride and passion to think that he belonged to this heart that throbbed with such onrushing zest and vitality. Soon the first adventurous lappings of the tide reached the corridor outside his room; he loved the noise and commotion of it; he loved the shouting and singing and yelling and the boisterous laughter; he loved the faint murmur of conflicting gramophones and the smells of coffee and cocoa that rose up from the downstairs studies; he loved the sound of old Hartopp's voice as he stood at the foot of the stairs at ten o'clock and shouted, in a key that sent up a melodious echoing through all the passages and landings: "Time, gentlemen, time!"--And when the lights in the dormitories had all been put out, and Millstead at last was silent under the stars, he loved above all things the strange magic of his own senses, that revealed him a Millstead that nobody else had ever seen, a Millstead rapt and ethereal, one with the haze of night and the summer starshine.