The school settled down. The Head, lean, crow-like, flapped the wings of his gown. He seemed to find it difficult to make a beginning, and while he waited for a word his left arm twitched. Then he began. It was obvious that his pause had been nothing more than a rhetorical trick designed to fix the attention of an audience already thrilled by uncertainty. He wasn’t at a loss for words at all. He boomed, he ranted, he bellowed, he rolled his “r’s” and his eyes. The masters, sitting at their high desks, remained discreet and rather bored . . . all except Mr. Leeming, to whom the orator appeared as an inspired prophet of God. For the subject of his harangue was Mr. Leeming’s own: Impurity; and the whole meeting the immediate result of Mr. Leeming’s investigations. The curtain had gone up with a most theatrical flourish upon the Great Smut Row. The essence of the Head’s speech was a general threat. Certain things had been discovered; certain further inquiries were to be made; the fate of a large number of boys lay in the balance; more details were known, in all probability, than any of the victims suspected; to the youngest among them he made a special appeal; confession, immediate confession, would be the better part of valour; he looked to every member of the school to aid him in the task, the sacred duty, of purging St. Luke’s of this abominable thing. Indeed it is possible that he meant what he said. His port was bad, and he knew better than to drink it; but the heady vintage that he brewed from sonorous words knocked him over every time. The meeting dissolved in silence. For the moment the school was impressed, less by the gravity of the charge than by its indefiniteness. The same evening brought tales of segregated suspects, of tearful and terrible interviews in the rooms of housemasters, of prefects suspended: of a veritable reign of terror—_lettres de cachet_ and the rest of it—in Citizen Leeming’s house. “D” dormitory and the others in charge of the languid Selby suffered least. When evening came to set a term to rumours only two were missing—the black Douglas, and an insignificant inky creature of the name of Hearn, whom the threats of the headmaster had driven to some grubby confession. An atmosphere of immense relief fell upon the awed dormitory and found vent in a memorable “rag.”