One cannot possibly enjoy the occasion until one has reached that delightful point when one has lost all sense of risk, when recklessly we pile the bonfire, snap our fingers in the nose of poor Mr.Gregg who is terrific enough when he marches solemnly into Chapel but is nothing at all when he is screaming with shrill anger amongst the lights and fury of the blazing common.
Will this wonderful moment when discipline, respect for authority, thoughts of home, terrors of being sent down, all these bogies, are flung derisively to the winds arrive to-night?
It has struck nine, and to Olva and Lawrence, walking solemnly through the market-place, it all seems quiet enough.
But behold how the gods work their will! It so happens that Giles of St Martin's has occasion, on this very day, to celebrate his twenty-first birthday.

It has been done as a twenty-first birthday should be done, and by nine o'clock the company, twenty in number, have decided that "it was the ruddiest of ruddy old worlds"-- that--"let's have some moretodrink ol' man--it was Fifth o' November--and that a ruddyoldbonfire would be--a--ruddyol'-joke---" Now, at half-past nine, the company of twenty march singing down the K.P.and gather unto themselves others--a murmur is spreading through the byways.

"Bonfire on the Common." "Bonfire on the Common." The streets begin to be black with undergraduates.
2 Olva was conscious as he passed with Lawrence through the now crowded streets that Bunning's hysteria had had an effect upon his nerves.

He could not define it more directly than by saying that the Shadow that had, during these many weeks, appeared to be pursuing him, at a distance, now seemed to be actually with him.

It was as though three of them, and not two, were walking there side by side.