o'clock, Charchester by that time having made two hundred and forty-one
for two wickets, the left-hander ran into three figures, and the
captain promptly declared the innings closed. Beckford's only chance
was to play for a draw, and in this they succeeded. When stumps were
drawn at a quarter to seven, the score was a hundred and three, and
five wickets were down. The Bishop had the satisfaction of being not
out with twenty-eight to his credit, but nothing less than a century
would have been sufficient to soothe him after his shocking bowling
performance. Pringle, who during the luncheon interval had encountered
his young friends the Ashbys, and had been duly taunted by them on the
subject of leather-hunting, was top scorer with forty-one. Norris, I
regret to say, only made three, running himself out in his second over.
As the misfortune could not, by any stretch of imagination, be laid at
anybody else's door but his own, he was decidedly savage. The team
returned to Beckford rather footsore, very disgusted, and abnormally
silent. Norris sulked by himself at one end of the saloon carriage, and
the Bishop sulked by himself at the other end, and even Marriott
forbore to treat the situation lightly. It was a mournful home-coming.
No cheering wildly as the brake drove to the College from Horton, no
shouting of the School song in various keys as they passed through the
big gates. Simply silence. And except when putting him on to bowl, or
taking him off, or moving him in the field, Norris had not spoken a
word to the Bishop the whole afternoon.

It was shortly after this disaster that Mr Mortimer Wells came to stay
with the Headmaster. Mr Mortimer Wells was a brilliant and superior
young man, who was at some pains to be a cynic. He was an old pupil of
the Head's in the days before he had succeeded to the rule of Beckford.
He had the reputation of being a 'ripe' scholar, and to him had been
deputed the task of judging the poetical outbursts of the bards of the