They at once made Eric take a part in some very distant reminiscences of Macbeth, and corked his cheeks with whiskers and mustachios to make him resemble Banquo, his costume being completed by a girdle round his nightshirt, consisting of a very fine crimson silk handkerchief, richly broidered with gold, which had been brought to him from India, and which at first, in the innocence of his heart, he used to wear on Sundays, until he acquired the sobriquet of “the Dragon.”  Duncan made a superb Macbeth.

They were doing the dagger-scene, which was put on the stage in a most novel manner.  A sheet had been pinned from the top of the room, on one side of which stood a boy with a broken dinner knife, the handle end of which he was pushing through a hole in the middle of the sheet at the shadow of Duncan on the other side.

Duncan himself, in an attitude of intensely affected melodrama, was spouting—­

     “Is this a dagger which I see before me? 
     The handle towards me now? come, let me clutch thee;”

And he snatched convulsively at the handle of the protruded knife; but as soon as he nearly touched it, this end was immediately withdrawn, and the blade end substituted, which made the comic Macbeth instantly draw back again, and recommence his apostrophe.  This scene had tickled the audience immensely, and Duncan, amid shouts of laughter, was just drawing the somewhat unwarrantable conclusion that it was

     “A dagger of the mind, a false creation,”

when a sudden grating, followed by a reverbrated clang, produced a dead silence.

“Cave,” shouted Eric, and took a flying leap into his bed.  Instantly there was a bolt in different directions; the sheet was torn down, the candles dashed out, the beds shoved aside, and the dormitories at once plunged in profound silence, only broken by the heavy breathing of sleepers, when in strode—­not Mr. Rose or any of the under masters—­but—­Dr. Rowlands himself!

He stood for a moment to survey the scene.  All the dormitory doors were wide open; the sheet which had formed the stage curtain lay torn on the floor of No. 7; the beds in all the adjoining rooms were in the strangest positions; and half-extinguished wicks still smouldered in several of the sconces.  Every boy was in bed, but the extraordinary way in which the bed clothes were huddled about told an unmistakeable tale.

He glanced quickly round, but the moment he had passed into No. 8, he heard a run, and, turning, just caught sight of Upton’s figure vanishing into the darkness of the lavatory, towards the study stairs.

He said not a word, but stalked hastily through all dormitories, again stopping at No. 7 on his return.

He heard nothing but the deep snores of Duncan, and instantly fixed on him as a chief culprit.

“Duncan!”

No reply; but calm stertorous music from Duncan’s bed.

“Duncan!” he said, still louder and more sternly, “you sleep soundly, sir, too soundly; get up directly,” and he laid his hand on the boy’s arm.