Publisher's Synopsis
One wet spring afternoon the sky was full of broken clouds, and the common was swept bytheir shadows, between which patches of green and yellow gorse were bright in the brokensunlight. The hills to the northward were obscured by a heavy shower, traces of whichwere drying off the slates of the school, a square white building, formerly a gentleman'scountry-house. In front of it was a well-kept lawn with a few clipped holly-trees. At therear, a quarter of an acre of land was enclosed for the use of the boys. Strollers on thecommon could hear, at certain hours, a hubbub of voices and racing footsteps from withinthe boundary wall. Sometimes, when the strollers were boys themselves, they climbed tothe coping, and saw on the other side a piece of common trampled bare and brown, with afew square yards of concrete, so worn into hollows as to be unfit for its original use as aball-alley. Also a long shed, a pump, a door defaced by innumerable incised inscriptions, the back of the house in much worse repair than the front, and about fifty boys in taillessjackets and broad, turned-down collars. When the fifty boys perceived a stranger on thewall they rushed to the spot with a wild halloo, overwhelmed him with insult and defiance, and dislodged him by a volley of clods, stones, lumps of bread, and such other projectiles aswere at han
