About the fifth of November it was a school custom to meet on a
certain common not far from Roughborough and burn somebody in
effigy, this being the compromise arrived at in the matter of
fireworks and Guy Fawkes festivities. This year it was decided that
Pontifex's governor should be the victim, and Ernest, though a good
deal exercised in mind as to what he ought to do, in the end saw no
sufficient reason for holding aloof from proceedings which, as he
justly remarked, could not do his father any harm.
It so happened that the Bishop had held a confirmation at the school
on the fifth of November. Dr. Skinner had not quite liked the
selection of this day, but the Bishop was pressed by many engagements,
and had been compelled to make the arrangement as it then stood.
Ernest was among those who had to be confirmed, and was deeply
impressed with the solemn importance of the ceremony. When he felt the
huge old Bishop drawing down upon him as he knelt in chapel he could
hardly breathe, and when the apparition paused before him and laid its
hands upon his head he was frightened almost out of his wits. He
felt that he had arrived at one of the great turning points of his
life, and that the Ernest of the future could resemble only very
faintly the Ernest of the past.
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