your steps most carefully in the future. Pick up those golf-balls."
He passed on.


Next day Richards, who had been a carpenter in the Navy, and to whom
odd jobs were confided, was ordered to take up a dormitory floor; for
Mr. King held that something must have died there.

"We need not neglect all our work for a trumpery incident of this
nature; though I am quite aware that little things please little
minds. Yes, I have decreed the boards to be taken up after lunch
under Richards's auspices. I have no doubt it will be vastly
interesting to a certain type of so-called intellect; but any boy of
my house or another's found on the dormitory stairs will _ipso_facto_
render himself liable to three hundred lines."

The boys did not collect on the stairs, but most of them waited
outside King's. Richards had been bound to cry the news from the
attic window, and, if possible, to exhibit the corpse.

"'Tis a cat, a dead cat!" Richards's face showed purple at the window.
He had been in the chamber of death and on his knees for some time.

"Cat be blowed!" cried McTurk. "It's a dead fag left over from last
term. Three cheers for King's dead fag!"

They cheered lustily.

"Show it, show it! Let's have a squint at it!" yelled the juniors.
"Give her to the Bug-hunters." (This was the Natural History