him back to the little dormitory at the top of Heriot's house.
"Why did you want to do it?" cried Relton, with sudden exasperation. "Did you think it was going to make a hero of you in the eyes of the school?"
Sullen silence confessed some such thought.
"You!" continued Relton, with sharp contempt. "You who might really have been a bit of a hero, if only you'd waited till next term!"
Jan looked up at last.
"Next term, sir?"
"Yes, next term, as a left-hand bowler! I saw you bowl the only time you ever played on the Upper last year. It was too late then, but I meant to make something of you this season. You were my dark horse, Rutter. I had my eye on you for the Eleven, and you go and do a rotten thing for which you'll have to go as sure as you're sitting there!"
So that was the meaning of kind words and light penalties. The Eleven itself! Jan had not been so long at school without discovering that the most heroic of all distinctions was to become a member of the school eleven. Once or twice he had dreamt of it as an ultimate possibility in his own case; it was really Chips who had put the idea into his head, but even Chips had regarded it only as a distant goal. And to think it might have been next term—just when there was to be no next term at all!
"Don't make it worse than it is, sir," mumbled Jan, as the firelight played on the two pairs of drying boots. The other pair shifted impatiently on the hearthrug.
"I couldn't. It's as bad as bad can be; I'm only considering if it's possible to make it the least bit better. If I could get you off with the biggest licking you ever
