CHAPTER TWENTY.
"FAMA VOLAT." 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.