"D'you remember," remarked the former, "how, that night we caught the
Philistines bagging our fireworks, you said, 'Well, I should think now
we've just about finished with young Noaks'?"

"Did I?" answered Jack, shrugging his shoulders. "My eye, I ought to
have said we'd just begun!"



CHAPTER VII.


RONLEIGH COLLEGE.

The first two or three weeks of a new boy's life at a big school are, as
a rule, a dull and uneventful period, which does not furnish many
incidents that are of sufficient interest to be worth recording.

The Triple Alliance passed through the principal entrance to Ronleigh
College one afternoon towards the end of January, with no flourish of
trumpets or beat of drums to announce the fact of their arrival to their
one hundred and eighty odd schoolfellows. They were simply "new kids."
But though, after the fame they had won at The Birches, it was rather
humiliating at first to find themselves regarded as three nobodies, yet
there was some compensation in the thought that, just as the smallest
drummer-boy can point to a flag covered with "honours," and say
"My regiment," so, in looking round at the many things of which
Ronleians past and present had just reason to be proud, they could claim
it as "our school," and feel that they themselves formed a part, however