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      Pueri circum innuptaeque puellae
   Sacra canuut, funemque manu contingere gaudent.

But the ill-starred folk of Troy could not have shown more enthusiasm in haling within their walls the fatal wooden horse, than did the men and boys of Uppingham, who harnessed themselves, some four-score of them, to that guileless structure, which, though indeed it has some other name, we will call at present our triumphal car.  They harnessed themselves to it at the east-end of the town, and drew it with the pomp of a swarming multitude all the length of the long street to its western mouth and half the way back again.  On went that unwieldy car of triumph, bearing a freight of eager faces behind its windows, and carrying a crowd of sitters, precariously clustered wherever a perch could be found on its swaying roof, under the verdant span of the arches and the flow of the streamers: 

   Ilia subit mediaeque minans inlabitur urbi.

On it went, with the hum of applauding voices increasing round it, till the popular fervour found articulate utterance in a burst of jubilant music.  There swept past our ears, first, the moving strains of “Auld lang syne,” and then, as if in answer to the appeal to “Auld acquaintance,” came the jocund chorus “There is nae luck about the house”—­most eloquent assurance that we were welcome home.  And then in turn the music died down, and the crowd round the now halted procession cheered with a will for “the school,” “the Headmaster and the masters,” and the school taking up with zest the genial challenge, returned the blessing with such a shout as if they meant the echoes of that merry evening to make amends in full to street and houses for their fourteen months of silence.

It was “all over but the shouting:”  but that was not over till some hours of dusk had gathered over school and town.  For first the multitude besieged the well-known mighty gates, behind which lies the studious quiet of the Schoolhouse Quad.  When they were admitted they came in like a flood, and filled the space within; but for all they were so many, there was an orderliness and quietude in the strange assemblage which made their presence there seem not strange at all, and they listened like one man to the words in which the Headmaster, who came out to meet them, framed his thanks for this unequivocal welcome.  This done, they flowed out again, and streamed across the valley and up the hill to carry the same message of goodwill to the distant houses, and so with more cheering and more speeches came to an end a day of happiest omen for the joint fortunes of Uppingham School and Town.