To Peter indeed it all came very slowly because he had known so little before. He had not been a week in the place before there were very many things that he was told--there were other things that he saw for himself.

There is, for instance, at the end of the third week, the incident of Ferris, the Captain of the School. He was as a God in Peter's eyes, he was greater, more wonderful than Stephen, than any one in the world. His word was law....

One late afternoon Peter cleaned plates for him in his study, and Ferris watched him. Ferris was kind and talked about many things out of his great wisdom, and then he asked Peter whether he would always like to be his fag, and Peter, delighted, said "Yes."

Then Ferris smiled and spoke, dropping his voice. Three weeks earlier Peter would not have understood, but now he understood quite well and he went very white and broke from the room, leaving the plates where they were--and Cheeseman became Ferris' fag--

This was all very puzzling and perplexing to Peter.

But after that first evening when he had hidden his head in the greatcoat and cried, he had shown no sign of fear and he soon found that, on that side of Life, things became easy. He was speedily left alone, and indeed he must have been, in spite of his small size, something of a figure even then.

His head was so very firm on his shoulders, his grey eyes were so very straight, and his lip curled in a disagreeable way when he was displeased; he was something of the bulldog, and even at this early period the First and Second forms showed signs of meek surrender to his leadership. But he was, of course, not happy--he was entirely miserable.

He would be happier later on when he had been able to arrange all these puzzling certainties so different from those dazzling imaginations that he had painted. How strange of him to have been so glad to leave Stephen and the others--even old Curtis! What could he have thought was coming!

He remembered as though it had been another life that Christmas Eve, the fight, the beating, the carols....

And yet, with it all, with the dreariness and greyness and fierceness and dirtiness of it all, he would not change it for those earlier things--this was growing, this was growing up!

He was certainly happier after his meeting with Cardillac--"Cards" as he was always called. Here was a hero indeed! Not to displace, of course, Stephen, who remained as a stained-glass window remains, to be looked at and treasured and remembered--but here was a living wonder! Every movement that Cards made was astounding, and not only Peter felt it.

Even the masters seemed to suggest that he was different from the rest and watched him admiringly. Cards was only fourteen, but he had seen the world. He had been with his mother (his father was dead) about Europe, he knew London, he had been to the theatres; school, he gave them all to understand, was an interim in the social round. He took Peter's worship very easily and went for walks with him and talked in a wonderful way.

He admired Peter's strength.

Peter found that Galleon--Bobby Galleon--was disappointing, not very interesting. He had never read his father's books, and he couldn't tell Peter very much about the great man; he was proud of him but rather reserved. He had not many ideas about anything and indeed when he went for a walk with Peter was usually very silent, although always in a good temper. Cards thought Galleon very dull and never spoke to him if he could avoid doing so, and Peter was sometimes quite angry with Galleon because he would "turn up so" when one might have had Cards to oneself.

Peter's main feeling about it all when half term arrived was that one must just stand with one's back to the wall if one was to avoid being hurt. He did not now plunge into broils to help other people; he found that it did not in reality help them and that it only meant that he got kicked as well as the other boy. One's life was a diligent watchfulness with the end in view of avoiding the enemy. The enemy was to be found in any shape and form; there was no security by night or day, but on the whole life was safer if one spoke as little as possible and stuck to the wall. There were Devils--most certainly Devils--roaming the world, and as he watched the Torture and the Terror and then the very dreadful submission, he vowed with clenched lips that he would never Submit...and so gradually he was learning the truth of that which Frosted Moses had spoken...

Cornwall, meanwhile--the Grey Hill, Scaw House, the hills above Truro--remained to him during these weeks, securely hidden.

III

There remains to be chronicled of that first term only the Comber Fight and, a little conversation, one windy day, with Galleon. The small boy, by name Beech Minimus, whom Peter had defended on that earlier occasion, had attached himself with unswerving fidelity to his preserver. He was round and fat, and on his arrival had had red cheeks and sparkling eyes--now he was pale and there were lines under his eyes; he started if any one spoke to him, and was always eager to hide when possible. Peter was very sorry for him, but, after a month of the term had passed he had, himself, acquired the indifference of those that stand with their backs to the wall. Beech would go on any kind of errand for him and would willingly have died for him had it been required of him--he did indeed during the hours that he was left in peace in his dormitory, picture to himself wonderful scenes in which he saved Peter from horrible deaths and for his own part perished.

It may have been that he clung to Peter partly because there was more safety in his neighbourhood, for amongst the lower school boys at any rate, very considerable fear of Peter was to be noticed, but Beech's large eyes raised to the other boy's face or his eager smile as he did something that Peter required of him, spoke devotion.

Beech Minimus was forced, however, for the good of his soul, to suffer especial torture between the hours of eight and nine in the evening. It was the custom that the Lower School should retire from preparation at eight o'clock, it being supposed that at that hour the Lower School went to bed. But Authority, blinded by trustful good nature and being engaged at that hour with its wine and dinner, left the issue to chance and the Gods, and human nature being what it is, the Lower School triumphed in freedom. There was a large, empty class room at the back of the building where much noise might safely be made, and in this place and at this hour followed the nightly torture of Beech and his minute companions--that torture named by the Gods, "Discipline," by the Authorities, "Boys will be Boys," by the Parent, "Learning to be a Man,"

and by the Lower School "A Rag." Beech and his companions had not as yet a name for it. Peter was, as a rule, left to his own thoughts and spent the hours amongst the greatcoats in the passage reading David Copperfield or talking in whispers to Bobby Galleon. But nevertheless he was not really indifferent, he was horribly conscious even in his sleep, of Beech's shrill "Oh! Comber, don't! Please, Comber, oh!" and Beech being in the same dormitory as himself he noticed, almost against his will, that shivering little mortal as he crept into bed and cowered beneath the sheets wondering whether before morning he would be tossed in sheets or would find his bed drenched in water or would be beaten with hair brushes. Peter's philosophy of standing it in silence and hitting back if he were himself attacked was scarcely satisfactory in Beech's case, and, again and again, his attention would be dragged away from his book to that other room where some small boys were learning lessons in life.

The head of this pleasant sport was one Comber, a large, pale-faced boy, some years older than his place in the school justified, but of a crass stupidity, a greedy stomach and a vicious cruelty. Peter had already met him in football and had annoyed him by collaring him violently on one occasion, it being the boy's habit, owing to his size and reputation, to run down the field in the Lower School game, unattacked. Peter's hatred of him grew more intense week by week; some days after Mid-Term, it had swollen into a passion. He finally told Bobby Galleon one day at luncheon that on that very evening he was going to defy this Comber.

Galleon besought him not to do this, pointing out Comber's greater strength and the natural tendency of the Lower School to follow their leader blindly. Peter said nothing in reply but watched, when eight o'clock had struck and the Lower School had assembled in the class room, for his moment. It was a somewhat piteous spectacle. Comber and some half a dozen friends in the middle of the room, and forty boys ranging in years from eight to twelve, waiting with white faces and propitiatory smiles, eager to assist in the Torture if they only might themselves be spared.

"Now you chaps," this from Comber--"we'll have a Gauntlet. I votes we make young Beech run first."

"Rather! Come on, Beech--you've jolly well got to."

"Buck up, you funk!" from those relieved that they were themselves, for the instant, safe.

Peter was sitting on a bench at the back of the room--he stood on the bench and shouted, "You're a beast. Comber."

There was immediate silence--every one turned first to Comber, and then back to Peter. Comber paused in the preparation of the string whip that he was making, and his face was crimson.

"Oh, it's you, you young skunk, is it? Bring him here some of you fellows."

Eager movements were made in his direction, but Peter, still standing on his bench, shouted: "I claim a fight."

There was silence again--a silence now of incredulity and amazement.

But there was nothing to be done; if any one claimed a fight, by all the rules and traditions of Dawson's he must have it. But that Westcott, a new boy and in the bottom form should challenge Comber! Slowly, and as it were against their will, hearts beat a little faster, faces brightened. Of course Westcott would be most hopelessly beaten, but might not this prove the beginning of the end of their tyrant?

Meanwhile, Comber between his teeth: "All right, you young devil, I'll give you such a hiding as you damned well won't forget. Then we'll treat you properly afterwards."

A ring was made, and there was silence, so that the prefects might not be attracted, because fighting in the Lower School was forbidden. Coats were taken off and Peter faced Comber with the sensation of attacking a mountain. Peter knew nothing about fighting at all, but Comber had long subsisted on an easy reputation and he was a coward at heart. There swung into Peter's brain the picture of The Bending Mule, the crowding faces, the swinging lamp, Stephen with the sledge-hammer blow...it was the first time for weeks that he had thought of Treliss.

He was indifferent--he did not care; things could not be worse, and he did not mind what happened to him, and Comber minded very much indeed, and he had not been hit in the face for a long time. His arms went round like windmills, and the things that he would like to have done were to pull Peter's hair from its roots and to bite him on the arm. As the fight proceeded and he knew that his face was bleeding and that the end of his nose had no sensation in it at all he kicked with his feet and was conscious of cries that he was not playing the game. Infuriated that his recent supporters should so easily desert him, he now flung himself upon Peter, who at once gave way beneath the bigger boy's weight. Comber then began to bite and tear and scratch, uttering shrill screams of rage and kicking on the floor with his feet. He was at once pulled away, assured by those dearest friends who had so recently and merrily assisted him in his "rags" that he was not playing the game and was no sportsman. He was moreover a ludicrous sight, his trousers being torn, one blue-black eye staring from a confused outline of dust and blood, his hair amazingly on end.

There were also many cries of "Shame, Comber," "Dirty game," and even "Well played young Westcott!"

He knew as he wept bitter tears into his blood-stained hands that his reign was at an end.

There were indeed, for the time at any rate, no more "rags," and Peter might, an he would, have reigned magnificently over the Lower School.

But he was as silent and aloof as ever, and was considered "a sidey devil, but jolly plucky, by Gad."

And for himself he got at any rate the more continued companionship of Cards, who languidly, and, perhaps a younger Sir Willoughby Patterne "with a leg," admired his muscle.

IV

Finally, towards the end of the term, Peter and Bobby Galleon may be seen sitting on a high hill. It is a Sunday afternoon in spring, and far away there is a thin line of faintly blue hills. Nearer to view there are grey heights more sharply outlined and rough, like drawing paper--painted with a green wood, a red-roofed farm, a black church spire, and a brown ploughed field. Immediately below them a green hedge hanging over a running stream that has caught the blue of the sky. Above them vast swollen clouds flooding slowly with the faint yellow of the coming sunset, hanging stationary above the stream and seeming to have flung to earth some patches of their colour in the first primroses below the hedge. A rabbit watches, his head out of his hole.

The boys' voices cut the air.

"I say, Bobby, don't you ever wonder about things--you never seem to want to ask questions."

"No, I don't suppose I do. I'm awfully stupid. Father says so."

"It's funny your being stupid when your father's so clever."

"Do you mind my being stupid?"

"No--only I'd like you to want to know things--things like what people are like inside--their thinking part I mean, not their real insides.

People like Mother Gill and old Binns and Prester Ma: and then what one's going to do when one's grown up--you never want to know that."

"No, it'll just come I suppose. Of course, I shan't be clever like the governor."

"No, I don't think you will."

Once again: "Do you mind my being so stupid, Peter?"

"No--I'm awfully stupid too. But I like to wonder about things.