The master mounted into the high desk by the door, and one of the prepostors of the week stood by him on the steps, the other three marching up and down the middle of the school with their canes, calling out, “Silence, silence!” The sixth form stood close by the door on the left, some thirty in number, mostly great big grown men, as Tom thought, surveying them from a distance with awe; the fifth form behind them, twice their number, and not quite so big.  These on the left; and on the right the lower fifth, shell, and all the junior forms in order; while up the middle marched the three prepostors.

Then the prepostor who stands by the master calls out the names, beginning with the sixth form; and as he calls each boy answers “here” to his name, and walks out.  Some of the sixth stop at the door to turn the whole string of boys into the close.  It is a great match-day, and every boy in the school, will he, nill he, must be there.  The rest of the sixth go forwards into the close, to see that no one escapes by any of the side gates.

To-day, however, being the School-house match, none of the School-house prepostors stay by the door to watch for truants of their side; there is carte blanche to the School-house fags to go where they like.  “They trust to our honour,” as East proudly informs Tom; “they know very well that no School-house boy would cut the match.  If he did, we’d very soon cut him, I can tell you.”

The master of the week being short-sighted, and the prepostors of the week small and not well up to their work, the lower-school boys employ the ten minutes which elapse before their names are called in pelting one another vigorously with acorns, which fly about in all directions.  The small prepostors dash in every now and then, and generally chastise some quiet, timid boy who is equally afraid of acorns and canes, while the principal performers get dexterously out of the way.  And so calling-over rolls on somehow, much like the big world, punishments lighting on wrong shoulders, and matters going generally in a queer, cross-grained way, but the end coming somehow, which is, after all, the great point.  And now the master of the week has finished, and locked up the big school; and the prepostors of the week come out, sweeping the last remnant of the school fags, who had been loafing about the corners by the fives court, in hopes of a chance of bolting, before them into the close.

“Hold the punt-about!” “To the goals!” are the cries; and all stray balls are impounded by the authorities, and the whole mass of boys moves up towards the two goals, dividing as they go into three bodies.  That little band on the left, consisting of from fifteen to twenty boys, Tom amongst them, who are making for the goal under the School-house wall, are the School-house boys who are not to play up, and have to stay in goal.  The larger body moving to the island goal are the School boys in a like predicament.  The great mass in the middle