CHAPTER XXV.
THE RETURN.
"Boom! Boom!" thundered the big drum.
"Tootle-toot!" shrilled the fife.
"Tarum! Taroom!" growled the horns.
The Harwell band marched through the archway and defiled on to the platform.

The college marched after.

Well, perhaps not all the college; I have heard that a senior living in Lanter was too ill to be present.
But the incoming platform was thronged from wall to track, so it was perhaps as well that he didn't come, because there positively wasn't room for him.
"What is it ?" asked a citizen in a silk hat of a gayly decorated youth on the outskirts of the crowd.

The latter stared for full a minute ere the words came.

Then he cried: "Here's a fellow who wants to know what we're here for!" And a great groan of derision went up to the arching roof, and the ignorant person slunk away, yet not before his silk hat had been pushed gently but firmly far down over his eyes.