"No."

"You know you have to go four times a week?"

"Yes."

"Have you leave off from Matheson?"

"No."

"Do you wish to appeal?"

Within living memory no boy in Matheson's had ever exercised his right of appeal—a tribute, I hope, to the substantial justice of succeeding generations of monitors. O'Rane looked round at the four of us with a mixture of sullenness and timidity in his expressive black eyes.

"Guess I'm up against some blamed rule?" he hazarded.

Loring nodded.