these holes the boys could catch glimpses of the outer world--glimpses
worth catching, too, for all around stood the great forest, the
playground of boys and girls during noon-hour and recesses; an enchanted
land, peopled, not by fairies, elves, and other shadowy beings of
fancy, but with living things, squirrels, and chipmunks, and weasels,
chattering ground-hogs, thumping rabbits, and stealthy foxes, not
to speak of a host of flying things, from the little gray-bird that
twittered its happy nonsense all day, to the big-eyed owl that hooted
solemnly when the moon came out. A wonderful place this forest, for
children to live in, to know, and to love, and in after days to long
for.

It was Friday afternoon, and the long, hot July day was drawing to a
weary close. Mischief was in the air, and the master, Archibald Munro,
or "Archie Murro," as the boys called him, was holding himself in with
a very firm hand, the lines about his mouth showing that he was fighting
back the pain which had never quite left him from the day he had twisted
his knee out of joint five years ago, in a wrestling match, and which,
in his weary moments, gnawed into his vitals. He hated to lose his
grip of himself, for then he knew he should have to grow stern and
terrifying, and rule these young imps in the forms in front of him by
what he called afterwards, in his moments of self-loathing, "sheer brute
force," and that he always counted a defeat.

Munro was a born commander. His pale, intellectual face, with its square
chin and firm mouth, its noble forehead and deep-set gray eyes, carried
a look of such strength and indomitable courage that no boy, however
big, ever thought of anything but obedience when the word of command
came. He was the only master who had ever been able to control, without
at least one appeal to the trustees, the stormy tempers of the young