The thing had happened after this fashion. At the conclusion of the
day's cricket, all those who had been playing in the four elevens
which the school put into the field against the old boys, together
with the school choir, were entertained by the headmaster to supper in
the Great Hall. The banquet, lengthened by speeches, songs, and
recitations which the reciters imagined to be songs, lasted, as a
rule, till about ten o'clock, when the revellers were supposed to go
back to their houses by the nearest route, and turn in. This was the
official programme. The school usually performed it with certain
modifications and improvements.

About midway between Wrykyn, the school, and Wrykyn, the town, there
stands on an island in the centre of the road a solitary lamp-post. It
was the custom, and had been the custom for generations back, for the
diners to trudge off to this lamp-post, dance round it for some
minutes singing the school song or whatever happened to be the popular
song of the moment, and then race back to their houses. Antiquity had
given the custom a sort of sanctity, and the authorities, if they
knew--which they must have done--never interfered.

But there were others.

Wrykyn, the town, was peculiarly rich in "gangs of youths." Like the
vast majority of the inhabitants of the place, they seemed to have no
work of any kind whatsoever to occupy their time, which they used,
accordingly, to spend prowling about and indulging in a mild,
brainless, rural type of hooliganism. They seldom proceeded to
practical rowdyism and never except with the school. As a rule, they
amused themselves by shouting rude chaff. The school regarded them
with a lofty contempt, much as an Oxford man regards the townee. The