almost humorous contrast, when we discussed our interests in the Midlands
in a room overlooking the coast and hills of Cardiganshire, where one
turned from watching the waves breaking crisply on the beach, to study a
map of some property in Rutland pastures. It has been accounted a signal
proof of Roman self-confidence, that bidders could be found for a piece
of land on which Hannibal was encamped at the moment of sale. The
situations are not quite parallel. But people who could seriously
debate, as we did, on the purchase of a freehold at a time when not even
their Rome was their own, clearly had not despaired of their country.

With the exception of the moving incidents to be immediately narrated,
the tale of this term's life differs little from that of the preceding.
The round of work and play was much the same; the harriers were out
again, football went on as before, till superseded by the "athletics,"
and a match was played on March 7th against Shrewsbury School on their
ground, of which the result was a drawn battle.

Our difficulties this term were with the elements. In novels of school
life, where the scene is laid on the coast, the hero always imperils his
bones in an escapade upon the cliffs. The heroes of our romance knew
what was expected of them. Accordingly, two new boys of a week's
standing start one afternoon for a ramble on Borth Head and are missing
at tea-time. Search parties are organised at once (it was not the first
occasion, for the writer remembers sharing in a wild-goose chase which
lasted four hours of the night, along and under the same cliffs); while
one skirted the marsh to Taliesin, another explored the coast. The
latter party at nine o'clock in the evening discovered the involuntary
tenants perched upon a rock a little way up the cliff. They had climbed
to it to escape the tide which had cut them off, and here they sat,
telling stones in turn, they said, to while away the time till the tide