CHAPTER TWO.
A TRUE STORY IN TWO CHAPTERS.
Sub-Chapter I.
THE STORY.
Ferriby had broken up.

The rats and mice were having their innings in the schoolrooms, and the big bell was getting rusty for want of exercise.

The door of the Lower Third had not had a panel kicked out of it for a whole week, and Dr Allsuch's pictures and sofas and piano were all stacked up in the Detention Room while their proper quarters underwent a "doing-up." There was no mistake about the school having broken up.

And yet, if it was so, how came we all to be there this Christmas week, instead of sitting at our own firesides in the bosoms of our own families, anywhere but at Ferriby?
When I say all, I mean all in Jolliffe's House; the others had cleared out.

Bull's was empty, and Wragg's, across the quadrangle, had not a ghost of a fellow left.