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FATHERS OF MEN

discords. They followed each other with due propriety all the rest of the day.

The chapel bells led off with their incorrigibly merry measure. Worse hearing was the accompanying tramp of boys in twos and threes, in Sunday tails or Eton jackets; looking heartlessly content with life; taking off pæpostorial hats, or touching those hot school caps, to gowned and hooded masters; for Jan was obliged to peep through the casement blinds, not deliberately to make things worse, but for the sake or on the chance of a single moment's distraction. That was all he got. It was quite true that there were heaps of fellows now to whom he could not put a name. There could not have been more in his second or third term; mere mortal boys do not excite the curiosity of gods; but once or twice poor Lucifer espied some still unfallen angel in the ribbon of shade across the street. One was lbbotson, a god with clay feet, if ever there was one; but there he went, looking all he should be, to the happy jingle of those callous bells. lbbotson would come down as an Old Boy, and never think twice of what he had really been. Why should he? Jan, at all events, was not his judge; and yet he would be one of Jan's.

The church bells came as a relief, richer in tone, poorer in association, with townspeople on the pavement and not a sound in the house. Jan fell to and packed. All his wardrobe had been brought in now; his study possessions would be sent after him; so Mr. Heriot had looked in to say, and at the same time to extract an explicit pledge that Jan would not again set foot on the boys' side of the house. He wondered if the bath had been judged a step in that direction, and what it was feared that he might do when all their backs were turned. But he gave his word without complaining;