The Cock-House at Fellsgarth

by Talbot Baines Reed

The Modern seniors had certainly experienced a run of bad luck since the inauguration of the strike, which was to have brought their rivals down on their knees and secured for the Modern side a supremacy in Fellsgarth.

The second Rendlesham match, the defection of Corder, the mutiny of the juniors, the disbanding of the clubs, the row with the head-master, and finally, the defeat of Brinkman by his own victim, might be held to be enough to chasten their spirits, and induce them to ask themselves whether the game was worth the candle.

But, such is the infatuation of wrong-headedness, they still breathed vengeance on some one; and this time their victim was to be Rollitt.

The grudge against him had been steadily accumulating during the term. His outrage on the gentle Dangle was yet to be atoned for. His crime of playing in the fifteen was yet unappeased. His contempt of the whole crew of his enemies was not to be pardoned. Even his rescue of the lost juniors told against him, for it had helped to turn the public feeling of the School in favour of those recalcitrant young rebels. So far there had been no getting at him. He would not quarrel. He would not even recognise the existence of any one he did not care for.

But now a chance had come. The more they discussed it, the more morally certain was it that he was answerable for the disappearance of the money from the Club funds. The very reluctance of his own house to take action in the matter showed that they at least appreciated the gravity of the suspicion.

It was a trump card for the Moderns. By pushing it now, they would be doing a service to the School. They would pose as the champions of honesty. They would be mortifying the Classics, even while they pretended to assist them; and, above all, they would wipe out scores with Rollitt himself, in a way he could not well disregard.

Clapperton and Dangle were not superlatively clever boys; but, whether by chance or design, they certainly hit upon an admirable method for bringing the matter to a crisis.

Dangle took upon himself to confide his suspicions, as a dead and terrible secret, to Wilcox, a middle-boy of Forder’s house, and notorious as the most prolific gossip in Fellsgarth; who, moreover, was known to have several talking acquaintances in the other houses.

Wilcox received Dangle’s communication with astonishment and—oh, of course, he wouldn’t breathe a word of it to any one, not for the world; it was a bad business, but it was Fisher major’s business to see it put right, and so on.

That night as Wilcox and his friend Underwood were retiring to rest, the former confided to the latter, under the deadliest pledge of secrecy, that there was a scandal going on about the School accounts. He mightn’t say more except that the fellow suspected was one of the last he himself should have dreamt of, although others might be less surprised.