back of the Schoolhouse: the boom of a cockchafer that some enthusiast had captured and imported into the dormitory. The clock in the high turret struck twelve. The chime wandered clanging over the empty quadrangle. III The next week was the most sensational that had ever shaken the placid life of St. Luke’s. The fall of Griffin was no startling matter—deliberately he had been “asking for it,” and the escapade of the fair in race-week was no more than a crowning glory. Still, it was an impressive affair. Immediately after breakfast next morning it was whispered that Griffin had been sent to the infectious ward in the sanatorium, which was always devoted, by reason of its size rather than any conscious attempt at symbolism, to the isolation of moral leprosy. It became certain—and Edwin, after his vision of Selby’s visit in the night had taken it for granted—that Griffin was to be “bunked.” In the afternoon, Douglas, faithfully prowling near his comrade’s prison, had seen Griffin, splendidly unrepentant, at the high window of his condemned cell. Griffin had smiled. Griffin, evidently, didn’t give a damn for the whole business. The house thrilled. Of such stuff heroes were made. It remained to be seen, in the opinion of the critical, how Griffin would shape in the supreme test of the scaffold on which he would probably be birched before the assembled school. The betting was all on Griffin’s being a sportsman. There followed a day of suspense. Consultations between masters were noticed. Selby, for a whole hour, had been closeted with the Head. Old fat Leeming had been sent for at last to join their deliberations. What had Leeming to do with it? Other housemasters had been summoned to the room beneath the clock and emerged with unusually serious faces. Who was this Griffin that his fate should shake the foundations of Olympus? The Head, indeed, showed his seriousness more clearly than all the others. He arrived late in chapel, where the service had waited on his coming: he stalked up the aisle, as full of omen as any black crow, with his pale seamed face and his shaggy black beard, and his arms crossed behind his back beneath the skirts of his gown. From his high seat at the end of the chancel he scowled on the whole school as if he hated it. At supper a message was read out. The school would assemble by classes in the Big Schoolroom at noon. Poor old Griff. . . . The sergeant, it was said, had been seen binding a new birch in the porter’s lodge.