This was but one of the many acts of unreserved generosity shown by this gentleman to the school.  It is not often that the opportunity offers of winning so much and such hearty gratitude as our neighbour of Gogerddan has won by his prompt liberality; still less often is the opportunity occupied with such thoughtful and ungrudging kindness.

We had help in the same kind from the Bishop of St. David’s, who put at our service a field close to the hotel; a rather wild one, but in which little plots and patches for a practising wicket were discovered by our experts.  The firm sands to the north were reported to yield an excellent “wicket;” with the serious deduction, however, that the pitch was worn out and needed to be changed every half-dozen balls.

Among such cares the week rolled away only too speedily, and brought the day of the school’s arrival upon us.  If we have failed, as we have, to convey a true impression of the serious labour and anxieties which crowded its hours, we will quote the summary of a writer who described it at the time, and knew what he was describing:  “It was like shaking the alphabet in a bag, and bringing out the letters into words and sentences; such was the sense of absolute confusion turned into intelligent shape.” {19}

CHAPTER IV.

Gesta ducis celebro, Rutulis qui primus ab oris Cambriae, odoratu profugus, Borthonia venit Litora; multum ille et sanis vexatus et aegris, Vi Superum, quibus haud curae gravis aura mephitis:  Multa quoque et loculo passus, dum conderet urbem Inferretque deos Cymris.

   AN EPIC FRAGMENT.

   [Greek text].

The careful general who has completed his disposition without one discoverable flaw, who has foreseen all emergencies, and anticipated every possible combination, may await the action with a certain moral confidence of success.  But he would be a man of no human fibre, were he not to feel some disquiet in his inmost soul when he gets upon horseback with his enemy in sight, and listens for the boom of the first gun.  Not very different, except for the absence of a like confidence in the completeness of their dispositions, were the emotions of the masters who manned the platform of Borth Station, when the gray afternoon of Tuesday, April 4th, drew sombrely towards its close.  The station was crowded with spectators from Aberystwith and Borth itself, curious to watch the entry of the boys.  Expectation was stimulated by the arrival of a train, which set all the crowd on tip-toe, and then swept through the station—­a mere goods train.  Half an hour’s longer waiting, and the right train drew up, and discharged Uppingham School on the remote Welsh platform.  It struck a spark of home feeling in the midst of the lonely landscape, and the chill of strange surroundings,