The master mounted into the high desk by the door, and one of the prepostors of the week stood by him on the steps, the other three marching up and down the middle of the school with their canes, calling out, "Silence, silence!" The sixth form stood close by the door on the left, some thirty in number, mostly great big grown men, as Tom thought, surveying them from a distance with awe; the fifth form behind them, twice their number, and not quite so big.

Some of the sixth stop at the door to turn the whole string of boys into the close. It is a great match-day, and every boy in the school, will he, nill he, must be there.

Then the two sides close, and you can see nothing for minutes but a swaying crowd of boys, at one point violently agitated.

The ball has just fallen again where the two sides are thickest, and they close rapidly around it in a scrummage.

The lines are thickest close to him, but young Brooke and two or three of his men are shifting up farther, where the opposite line is weak.

There it flies, straight between the two posts, some five feet above the cross-bar, an unquestioned goal; and a shout of real, genuine joy rings out from the School-house players-up, and a faint echo of it comes over the close from the goal- keepers under the Doctor's wall.

At this moment Griffith, the itinerant vender of oranges from Hill Morton, enters the close with his heavy baskets.