The adjutant rushed off, and presently three men went off carrying a blanket stretcher apiece, disappearing into the bushes near the orest-line where Browne's company lay, to reappear again five minutes later, four men to each sagging stretcher. Farther away on the right flank a dumpy little Garhwali hove into sight carrying a wounded man on his back. Evidently stretchers were run ning short up there too. The little man stumbled slowly along, and presently dropped his burden and straightened himself, then, squatting down, hoisted the wounded man on to his back, and so onward again slowly. Then they fell all of a heap, and the watching subaltern thought the resouer was hit; but no, he sorambled to his feet again, hoisted up his burden once more, and so away down the loose shale slope past the picquet, down the path into safety. You can't leave your wounded pals out to be out up by Mahsuds if anything humanly possible can be done to get them away. A signal flag flickered, and the company across the nullah fell back and joined the line by the picquet. A rush of dirty grey-clad figures showed for an instant the nullah, and vanished again as the whole line burst into fire. "Now for it," said Miles to himself as he gave the signal for Browne's company to come away. The first half of them emerged from the bushes below the orest and made for the picquet, a little group in the centre dragging along a wounded man. The supporting troops on the right of the picquet opened rapid fire as the remainder of the company came leaping over the loose slipping stones down the hill at top speed, the rear brought up by an Indian officer with two dead men's rifles, and Browne himself, revolver in hand. A rush of enemy whirled over the skyline behind them; the picquet Lewis gun yapped out, and a second later a salvo of shells burst round about the enemy, and as the smoke oleared away some of them could be seen tearing back with long strides over the skyline, three or four carrying either their own wounded or our dead to strip under cover. The gunners below were watching: "Bang-bang-wheuuu orump... or-r-rrump." But as Browne came in, Miles asked "Where's Williams?" "Out there," said Browne. "Got it through the neck over the hill-five men killed and three wounded trying to pull him in. Had to leave him in the end-stone-dead, thank God." Browne's face was very white and grim. The major swallowed twice before he spoke. Williams was Browne's best friend. sorry, old man. You take your company straight down and out now. They won't follow beyond the picquet and we've plenty of people here. Tell your men they've put up a d-d good show." Browne fell-in his company and marched off down the hill. The fire had slackened in front now, but the enemy, foiled of further advance, sniped steadily from the cover on the right, "smack-smack-smack," on the picquet walls, and once one of the picquet crumpled up slowly at his loophole, to slide inertly to the ground in a pool of frothy blood. but all was over bar the shouting. The day's work was finished satisfactorily, another picquet built and held, another halfmile of the road made goodas usual, at a price-while some of those who had paid it lay out in the rocks and bushes yonder, where the watching Mahsuds prowled, waiting for night to enable them to gather in something for their day's labour. They might attack the picquet at night-Jones half hoped they would-his wire was passably strong, and he would lay out some of the swine. "Poor old Billy!" Later the darkness came down, and the men in the new picquet stood to arms at their firing-places, tensely alert, and heard the Mahsuds calling to one another, and once for a while the voice of a wounded man calling, calling, until it suddenly stopped. The drone of an aeroplane sounded overhead: "Cr-r-rump The Very lights curved -or-rump-or-r-rump-heavenwards, throwing great c-r-rump," followed by the prolonged chatter of a Lewis gun. The ground fire died away, and the Garhwali company on the flank fell back quietly in line with the rest. The remaining wounded were despatched homewards, and then, platoon by platoon, the covering troops followed towards camp. The infantry subaltern watched them go, and then turned into the picquet. The men along the N.-E. face were firing intermittently into the bushes five hundred yards away, where oooasional enemy figures showed, black shadows and vivid white radiance over the hillside; and from time to time the spattering crackle of rifle fire and the burst of bombs told the camp down-stream that "X" picquet was still holding good. But Browne lay wide-eyed in the dark in his little 40-lb. tent thinking of Billy as he last saw him and of all the past years they had spent together, while a bitter black hatred against the hand of Fate seethed in his heart as he listened to the distant shots and thought of the enemy's ghoulish movements that drew them. (To be continued.) THE FAGS' APPEAL TO GOD. BY C. R. L. FLETCHER. MOST people who have visited the magnificent seventeenthcentury quadrangle at Braningham School know that the famous Fags' Dormitory, commonly abbreviated into "Fags' Dor," or "Fags," lies on the left hand of the great gate, and on the first floor. Over the gateway itself is the Common-room of the Sixthform boys, and beyond that, to the right of the gate, the studies and bed-chambers of the same Olympian personages. These rooms together fill up the western wing of the quadrangle. At right angles to "Fags," and forming the southern wing, come the three successive "dors " of the Lower, Middle, and Upper Fifth-form boys, and each "dor" communicates with the groundfloor by its own staircase; while the northern and eastern wings of the quadrangle are Occupied by the Chapel, the Schoolhouse dining-hall, sundry schoolrooms, and the entrance to the Cloister Garth, Part of the ground-floor of the southern wing is taken up by the private rooms of the Master of the Schoolhouse, familiarly known as "Schoolhouse Cad" -for the Headmaster, who is by right head of the Schoolhouse, lives in dignified state in a private house beyond Cloister Garth, and keeps a "oad" to perform for him the duty of looking after the hun dred boys who inhabit the Schoolhouse. My readers will be kind enough to note that the word "oad" is not used in any offensive sense; in school phrase it merely means "one who performs the work of another"-a Regent would be described at Braningham as "a King's cad." Mr Snow, or "Snorkins," the "oad" at the time of my tale, was a wise and popular master. The interior arrangements of the four great dormitories are all upon the same plan : on one side of each is a row of little divisions with desks, not unlike the "toys" at Winchester, and on the other side a corresponding number of beds, washstands, and chests of drawers; curtains supported on iron pillars conceal the row of beds in the daytime. In the centre on each side is a gap, and in these gaps stand, opposite to each other, a large fireplace and coal-box, and a large baize-covered table, with a few battered basket-chairs, which can always be carried across to the fireside. In "Fags," at least, whatever may be the custom in Lower, Middle, and Upper "Dors," it is in this central space that the twenty occupants do chiefly congregate. There la basse justice is administered (with the back of a long-handled bathbrush, the viotim kneeling with his trousers tight on the ancient coal-box) by the captain of fags; there the events of the day are discussed after evening school, cricket or football sides are made up, and plots are hatched. It is the Delphi, the oupaλós of fagdom, the centre of its earth. One of the first rules at the Schoolhouse is that no fag may, proprio motu, enter Lower, still less Middle or Upper Fifth "dors." It might almost be called an unnecessary rule, for no fag is likely to wish to enter those abodes of savage men, nor ever does 80 save when he is sent thither with a message by one of his lawful masters of the Sixth form; then, indeed, he is proteoted by privilege, and his person is as sacred as that of a herald in mediæval, or an ambassador in modern, times: it would be the actual duty of a fag to sneak (indeed it would not be sneaking at all) if any Fifth-form boy laid hands on him while he was so fagging. A less easily upheld rule is that no Fifth-form boy might come into "Fags"; for, although standing at right angles to it, "Lower" is only separated from "Fags" by a narrow space into which open two little rooms inhabited by specimens of that strange sex known as Schoolmaids;1 in odd half-hours in the summer, when all doors are open and dormitory cricket in full swing, a ball from "Lower" is quite apt to cannon off into "Fags," and will then usually be retrieved without scruple. "Fags" may not retrieve a ball from "Lower." In truth, the enforcement of rules of this kind depends on the wisdom and strength of Sixth form; there have been times not so far back in the history of the Schoolhousethere was, in fact, such a time when my tale begins-when the boys from "Lower" would invade "Fags" in force, oust the lawful occupants from the seats by their own fireplace, and generally run riot. was because the Olympians slept, and such invasion was always intensely resented by the little boys. That With their own lawful masters the relation of the occupants of "Fags" was much more cordial. As is well known, there are always twenty Sixth, and always twenty fags, a serf to each master. It is essentially a prædial serfdom, not a slavery: the labour-rents are not heavy, are fixed to definite hours, and cannot be increased ad voluntatem domini. Custom, the one real sovereign of all primitive and barbarous communities, is the surest protection of the fag. The Sixth may go into "Fags" at all hours of the day, and indeed it is their duty (very ill-performed as a rule, for they treat it as a supreme bore) to patrol it occasionally. Each fag has also his appointed duties to perform in bis master's own study and in 1 The office is hereditary in certain families; the qualifications are great bodily strength and great taciturnity; their names are always either Sarah or Marah or Maria. the Sixth Common-room, and some kind masters have even allowed good fags to take occasional refuge in their studies and do their lessons there. "Fags," then, is, or should be, by tradition one of the most privileged places of the School, and it is immensely conscious of the value of its privileges; though it possesses neither charter nor seal, it almost regards itself as a corporate body. As all students of medieval antiquities know, there are associations of men who by long prescription "aoquire the aspects" of corporations, and are very apt to act as if they really were such. Whether they can sue and be sued is a point which even the late F. W. Maitland had hardly been able to determine. I shall now endeavour to show how my heroes went so far as to claim this last great privilege of corporate bodies, and how it came to be granted to them by the highest earthly authority which they acknowledged. 1914, all except one of these collections had been merged in a Schoolhouse collection, to which each "dor" made its weekly contribution. "Fags alone stoutly refused any suggestion of such merger-"We began the idea, and we are going to carry it on on our own," and it insisted on carrying its contribution, by the hands of the captain of fags, to the actual hands of the matron of the hospital at the end of each term. How far this stout attitude on the part of the little boys was influenced by the fact that the matron almost always kept the little contributor to tea with her, and gave him what he described as a "buck feed," it is not for me to say, but it is a fact that successive captains usually managed to bring their contributions to her at about 4.30 P.M. on the last Saturday of each term. Now in all schools, as most of us know, the line between a voluntary contribution and At the beginning of the a forced levy is obscure and Great War, "Fage," which easily overstepped. "Fags claimed that it actually had had unanimously voted on more fathers fighting than September 21, 1914, that half any other dormitory could its weekly shillings, plus half boast, felt a great patriotic the money each fag brought impulse sweep through its from home at the beginning veins, and one form which of the term, plus half of any this impulse took was the tips that might be acquired collection of money for the during the term, should be "Comforts Fund" of the local contributed to this Comforts hospital. Similar collections Fund. Successive captains were begun in all the dormi- of fags had rigorously entories, and there was a good forced this rule until the end deal of praiseworthy rivalry of the year 1917. Once or between these. Before the twice there were small end of the winter term of skulkers who had failed to |