The chapel-bell began to ring at a quarter to eleven, and Tom got in early and took his place in the lowest row, and watched all the other boys come in and take their places, filling row after row; and tried to construe the Greek text which was inscribed over the door with the slightest possible success, and wondered which of the masters, who walked down the chapel and took their seats in the exalted boxes at the end, would be his lord.  And then came the closing of the doors, and the Doctor in his robes, and the service, which, however, didn’t impress him much, for his feeling of wonder and curiosity was too strong.  And the boy on one side of him was scratching his name on the oak panelling in front, and he couldn’t help watching to see what the name was, and whether it was well scratched; and the boy on the other side went to sleep, and kept falling against him; and on the whole, though many boys even in that part of the school were serious and attentive, the general atmosphere was by no means devotional; and when he got out into the close again, he didn’t feel at all comfortable, or as if he had been to church.

But at afternoon chapel it was quite another thing.  He had spent the time after dinner in writing home to his mother, and so was in a better frame of mind; and his first curiosity was over, and he could attend more to the service.  As the hymn after the prayers was being sung, and the chapel was getting a little dark, he was beginning to feel that he had been really worshipping.  And then came that great event in his, as in every Rugby boy’s life of that day—­the first sermon from the Doctor.

More worthy pens than mine have described that scene—­the oak pulpit standing out by itself above the School seats; the tall, gallant form, the kindling eye, the voice, now soft as the low notes of a flute, now clear and stirring as the call of the light-infantry bugle, of him who stood there Sunday after Sunday, witnessing and pleading for his Lord, the King of righteousness and love and glory, with whose Spirit he was filled, and in whose power he spoke; the long lines of young faces, rising tier above tier down the whole length of the chapel, from the little boy’s who had just left his mother to the young man’s who was going out next week into the great world, rejoicing in his strength.  It was a great and solemn sight, and never more so than at this time of year, when the only lights in the chapel were in the pulpit and at the seats of the prepostors of the week, and the soft twilight stole over the rest of the chapel, deepening into darkness in the high gallery behind the organ.