Department, pay nothing, unless, at the conclusion of their course,
they decide to leave the Army's service.

At the last examination, out of fourteen students sent up from this
Institution, thirteen passed the necessary test.




'THE NEST'



CLAPTON

When I began to write this book, I determined to set down all things
exactly as I saw or heard them. But, although somewhat hardened in
such matters by long experience of a very ugly world, I find that
there are limits to what can be told of such a place as 'The Nest' in
pages which are meant for perusal by the general public. The house
itself is charming, with a good garden adorned by beautiful trees. It
has every arrangement and comfort possible for the welfare of its
child inmates, including an open-air bedroom, cleverly contrived from
an old greenhouse for the use of those among them whose lungs are
weakly.

But these inmates, these sixty-two children whose ages varied from
about four to about sixteen! What can I say of their histories? Only
in general language, that more than one half of them have been subject
to outrages too terrible to repeat, often enough at the hands of their