Prodigious stories were afloat as to his wisdom and his prowess.

Examiners were reported to have rent their clothes in despair at his answers; and at football, rumour had it that once, in one of the out-matches against Ridgmoor, he had run the ball down the field with six of the other side on his back, and finished up with a drop at the goal from thirty yards.
But his popularity in his own house depended less on these exploits than on his general good-nature and incorruptible fairness.

He scorned to hit an opponent when he was down, and yet he would knock down a friend as soon as a foe if the credit of the School required it.

A few, indeed, there were whose habit it was to sneer at Yorke for being what they called "a saint." The captain of Fellsgarth would have been the last to claim such a title for himself; yet those who knew him best knew that in all he did, even in the common concerns of daily school life, he relied on the guidance and help of a Divine Friend, and was not ashamed to own his faith.
The one drawback to his character in the eyes of certain of his fellow- prefects and others at Wakefield's was that in the standing feud between Classics and Moderns he would take no part.

He demanded the allegiance of all parties on behalf of the School, and if any man refused it, Yorke was the sort of person who would make it his business to know the reason why.
Now as he got up and waited for the cheers to cease, no one could deny that he wasn't as fine a captain as Wakefield's could expect to see for many a day.