There was a moment's silence; then Thurston rose from his chair, and closing his book flung it down with a bang upon the table.
"All right," he said; "I'll do it. You fellows have been set against me from the first. I know all about it, and before I leave this place I'll pay you out."
"I almost wish we'd left it till after the holidays," said Oaks, as the three prefects walked down the passage.
"No," said Allingford firmly; "if we hesitate, and the fellows see it, we're lost. It must be done at once."
"Well, perhaps so," answered Oaks; "but I'll tell you this—Thurston means mischief. I wish he was going to leave. He won't forget this in a hurry, and my belief is we shall hear more about it next term."
CHAPTER XIII.
THE ELECTIONS.
Thurston's resignation, as might have been expected, gave rise to a considerable amount of excitement and conflicting opinion. Nearly every boy in the school saw clearly that he was both unworthy and unfitted to fulfil the duties of a prefect, but the peculiar circumstances under which he had, as "Rats" put it, been given "notice to quit," caused a large number of his schoolfellows to side with him, and condemn the action of the captain. Only a few of the general public knew exactly what the row had been. The Sixth Form authorities, refusing to be catechized, would answer no questions; while the other side took good care to spread abroad a very one-sided account of the affair.
The Wraxby match was fresh in everybody's mind. "Awfully hard lines I call it," said the cricketers. "He won that game for us; why didn't they let him go on a few days more till the end of the term?" While those young gentlemen, of whom a few are to be found in every school, who cherish a strong dislike to anything in the shape of law and order, were, of course, loud in their expressions of dissatisfaction at the removal of one who always winked at their transgressions.
At the commencement of the winter session it soon became evident that seven weeks of summer holiday had not dispelled the cloud which had overshadowed the close of the previous term. No sooner had the first excitement of meeting and settling down subsided a little than the question of Thurston's deposal cropped up again, and caused an unusual amount of interest to be felt by all Ronleigh in the forthcoming elections.