young Billy Silver alone had any pretensions to the esteem of his
fellow man. Kay's was the rowdiest house in the school, and the cream
of its rowdy members had come to camp. There was Walton, for one, a
perfect specimen of the public school man at his worst. There was
Mortimer, another of Kay's gems. Perry, again, and Callingham, and the
rest. A pleasant gang, fit for anything, if it could be done in
safety.

Kennedy observed them, and--the spectacle starting a train of
thought--asked Jimmy Silver, as they went into their tent just before
lights-out, if there was much ragging in camp.

"Not very much," said the expert. "Chaps are generally too done up at
the end of the day to want to do anything except sleep. Still, I've
known cases. You sometimes get one tent mobbing another. They loose
the ropes, you know. Low trick, I think. It isn't often done, and it
gets dropped on like bricks when it's found out. But why? Do you feel
as if you wanted to do it?"

"It only occurred to me that we've got a lively gang from Kay's here.
I was wondering if they'd get any chances of ragging, or if they'd
have to lie low."

"I'd forgotten Kay's for the moment. Now you mention it, they are
rather a crew. But I shouldn't think they'd find it worth while to rot
about here. It isn't as if they were on their native heath. People
have a prejudice against having their tent-ropes loosed, and they'd
get beans if they did anything in that line. I remember once there was
a tent which made itself objectionable, and it got raided in the night
by a sort of vigilance committee from the other schools, and the chaps