The six forms were marshalled in squares down the centre of the drill-hall, Form I, with Robert Stonehouse at the bottom, holding the place of dishonour under the shadow of the Headmaster’s rostrum.  Robert did not know that he was at the bottom of Form I, or that such a thing as Form I existed.  He did not know that he was older than the eldest of his class-mates, but he was aware of being unusually and uncomfortably large.  Under the curious stare that had greeted him on his first appearance and which now pressed on him from the rear and sides, he felt himself shoot up, inch by inch, into a horrible conspicuousness, whilst his feet grew flat and leaden, and his hands were too swollen to squeeze into his trousers pockets.

“. . . we have left undone those things which we ought to have done and we have done those things which we ought not to have done . . .”

He wondered what they were saying.  It sounded rather like one of those tongue-twisters which his father had taught him in a playful moment—­“round the rugged rock the ragged robber ran”—­but it was evidently no joking matter.  And it was something which everyone knew except himself.  The urchin on his left piped it out in an assured, self-satisfied treble.  The clergyman kneeling behind the raised desk came in with a bang at the beginning of each sentence, and then subsided into an indistinguishable murmur.  Evidently he knew what he was saying so well that he did not need even to think about it, for his eyes wandered over his folded hands as though in methodical search for somebody.  They reached Form I, and Robert, who saw them coming, broke instinctively into a panic-stricken gabble.  Of all the poems which Christine had read aloud to him, Casablanca was the only one he could remember, and he had got as far as “whence all but he had fled” before he saw that it was of no good.  The subterfuge had been recognized.  The clergyman had stopped praying and was gazing at him earnestly.  Robert gazed back, fascinated and open-mouthed.

“. . . and there is no health in us . . .”

But the strain of that encounter was too much for him.  He tried to escape, first to the ceiling and finally to his boots.  The stare pursued him, pointed at him.  In a moment the whole school would be on his track.  His eyes, rolling desperately to their corners, encountered a little dark man who had led in Form I and now stood sideways on, so as to keep his charge under constant survey.  Even in that moment of acute despair he arrested Robert’s attention.  There was something odd about him—­something distressful and indignant.  Whilst he prayed he made jerky, irritable movements which fluttered out the wings of his gown, so that with his sleek black hair and pointed face he looked like a large angry blackbird, trapped and tied by the foot.

“But Thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us . . .”

And then, suddenly, an amazing conviction broke upon Robert.  The little man wasn’t praying at all.  His lips moved, but the movement was all wrong.  He was repeating two words, over and over again, at great speed and with a suppressed violence.  They looked familiar—­painfully, elusively familiar.  Robert felt that in another moment he would recognize them: