For a time, the string theme is allowed to drop, but it comes up again as a chief agent of the catastrophe. Hal, on his way to the Archery-meeting stoops to pick up his ball and loses his hat. (“The string, as we may recollect, our wasteful hero had used in spinning his top”.). Running down the hill after it, he falls prostrate in his green and white uniform into a treacherous bed of red mud, and becomes the laughing-stock of his companions.