The White Feather | Page 4

has been going on for three years; and I have never heard of it till
now. It is when the bigger fellows get mixed up with the town that we
have to interfere. I wish the headmaster would put the place out of
bounds entirely until the election is over. Except at election time, the

town seems to go to sleep."
"That's what we ought to be doing," said Clowes to Trevor. "I think we
had better be off now, sir. We promised Mr Donaldson to be in some
time tonight."
"It's later than I thought," said Mr Seymour. "Good night, Clowes. How
many tries was it that you scored this afternoon? Five? I wish you were
still here, to score them for instead of against us. Good night, Trevor. I
was glad to see they tried you for Oxford, though you didn't get your
blue. You'll be in next year all right. Good night."
The two Old Wrykinians walked along the road towards Donaldson's. It
was a fine night, but misty.
"Jove, I'm quite tired," said Clowes. "Hullo!"
"What's up?"
They were opposite Appleby's at the moment. Clowes drew him into
the shadow of the fence.
"There's a chap breaking out. I saw him shinning down a rope. Let's
wait, and see who it is."
A moment later somebody ran softly through the gateway and
disappeared down the road that led to the town.
"Who was it?" said Trevor. "I couldn't see."
"I spotted him all right. It was that chap who was marking me today,
Stanning. Wonder what he's after. Perhaps he's gone to tar the statue,
like O'Hara. Rather a sportsman."
"Rather a silly idiot," said Trevor. "I hope he gets caught."
"You always were one of those kind sympathetic chaps," said Clowes.
"Come on, or Donaldson'll be locking us out."

II
SHEEN AT HOME
On the afternoon following the Oxford A match, Sheen, of Seymour's,
was sitting over the gas-stove in his study with a Thucydides. He had
been staying in that day with a cold. He was always staying in.
Everyone has his hobby. That was Sheen's.
Nobody at Wrykyn, even at Seymour's, seemed to know Sheen very
well, with the exception of Drummond; and those who troubled to think
about the matter at all rather wondered what Drummond saw in him.
To the superficial observer the two had nothing in common.

Drummond was good at games--he was in the first fifteen and the
second eleven, and had won the Feather Weights at Aldershot--and
seemed to have no interests outside them. Sheen, on the other hand,
played fives for the house, and that was all. He was bad at cricket, and
had given up football by special arrangement with Allardyce, on the
plea that he wanted all his time for work. He was in for an in-school
scholarship, the Gotford. Allardyce, though professing small sympathy
with such a degraded ambition, had given him a special dispensation,
and since then Sheen had retired from public life even more than he had
done hitherto. The examination for the Gotford was to come off
towards the end of the term.
The only other Wrykinians with whom Sheen was known to be friendly
were Stanning and Attell, of Appleby's. And here those who troubled to
think about it wondered still more, for Sheen, whatever his other
demerits, was not of the type of Stanning and Attell. There are certain
members of every public school, just as there are certain members of
every college at the universities, who are "marked men". They have
never been detected in any glaring breach of the rules, and their manner
towards the powers that be is, as a rule, suave, even deferential. Yet it
is one of the things which everybody knows, that they are in the black
books of the authorities, and that sooner or later, in the picturesque
phrase of the New Yorker, they will "get it in the neck". To this class
Stanning and Attell belonged. It was plain to all that the former was the
leading member of the firm. A glance at the latter was enough to show
that, whatever ambitions he may have had in the direction of villainy,
he had not the brains necessary for really satisfactory evildoing. As for
Stanning, he pursued an even course of life, always rigidly obeying the
eleventh commandment, "thou shalt not be found out". This kept him
from collisions with the authorities; while a ready tongue and an
excellent knowledge of the art of boxing--he was, after Drummond, the
best Light-Weight in the place--secured him at least tolerance at the
hand of the school: and, as a matter of fact, though most of those who
knew him disliked him, and particularly those who, like Drummond,
were what Clowes had called the Old