The next time that Tom came before him, however, the interview was of a very different kind.  It happened just about the time at which we have now arrived, and was the first of a series of scrapes into which our hero managed now to tumble.

The river Avon at Rugby is a slow and not very clear stream, in which chub, dace, roach, and other coarse fish are (or were) plentiful enough, together with a fair sprinkling of small jack, but no fish worth sixpence either for sport or food.  It is, however, a capital river for bathing, as it has many nice small pools and several good reaches for swimming, all within about a mile of one another, and at an easy twenty minutes’ walk from the school.  This mile of water is rented, or used to be rented, for bathing purposes by the trustees of the School, for the boys.  The footpath to Brownsover crosses the river by “the Planks,” a curious old single-plank bridge running for fifty or sixty yards into the flat meadows on each side of the river—­for in the winter there are frequent floods.  Above the Planks were the bathing-places for the smaller boys—­Sleath’s, the first bathing-place, where all new boys had to begin, until they had proved to the bathing men (three steady individuals, who were paid to attend daily through the summer to prevent accidents) that they could swim pretty decently, when they were allowed to go on to Anstey’s, about one hundred and fifty yards below.  Here there was a hole about six feet deep and twelve feet across, over which the puffing urchins struggled to the opposite side, and thought no small beer of themselves for having been out of their depths.  Below the Planks came larger and deeper holes, the first of which was Wratislaw’s, and the last Swift’s, a famous hole, ten or twelve feet deep in parts, and thirty yards across, from which there was a fine swimming reach right down to the mill.  Swift’s was reserved for the sixth and fifth forms, and had a spring board and two sets of steps:  the others had one set of steps each, and were used indifferently by all the lower boys, though each house addicted itself more to one hole than to another.  The School-house at this time affected Wratislaw’s hole, and Tom and East, who had learnt to swim like fishes, were to be found there as regular as the clock through the summer, always twice, and often three times a day.

Now the boys either had, or fancied they had, a right also to fish at their pleasure over the whole of this part of the river, and would not understand that the right (if any) only extended to the Rugby side.  As ill-luck would have it, the gentleman who owned the opposite bank, after allowing it for some time without interference, had ordered his keepers not to let the boys fish on his side—­the consequence of which had been that there had been first wranglings and then fights between the keepers and boys; and so keen had the quarrel become that the landlord and his keepers, after a ducking had been inflicted on