Sheen had always been something of a hermit. In his most sociable
moments he had never had more than one or two friends; but he had never
before known what it meant to be completely isolated. It was like
living in a world of ghosts, or, rather, like being a ghost in a living
world. That disagreeable experience of being looked through, as if one
were invisible, comes to the average person, it may be half a dozen
times in his life. Sheen had to put up with it a hundred times a day.
People who were talking to one another stopped when he appeared and
waited until he had passed on before beginning again. Altogether, he
was made to feel that he had done for himself, that, as far as the life
of the school was concerned, he did not exist.

There had been some talk, particularly in the senior day-room, of more
active measures. It was thought that nothing less than a court-martial
could meet the case. But the house prefects had been against it. Sheen
was in the sixth, and, however monstrous and unspeakable might have
been his acts, it would hardly do to treat him as if he were a junior.
And the scheme had been definitely discouraged by Drummond, who had
stated, without wrapping the gist of his remarks in elusive phrases,
that in the event of a court-martial being held he would interview the
president of the same and knock his head off. So Seymour's had fallen
back on the punishment which from their earliest beginnings the public
schools have meted out to their criminals. They had cut Sheen dead.

In a way Sheen benefited from this excommunication. Now that he could
not even play fives, for want of an opponent, there was nothing left
for him to do but work. Fortunately, he had an object. The Gotford
would be coming on in a few weeks, and the more work he could do for
it, the better. Though Stanning was the only one of his rivals whom he
feared, and though _he_ was known to be taking very little trouble