Stalky and his two friends, Beetle and McTurk, attend a boarding school in Devon, England during the mid-19th century. Studying is not important to them and instead they have many interesting experiences including taking revenge on another school house that insults their hygiene, tricking some teachers who try to catch them breaking the rules, and finally achieving success as adults despite their teachers thinking that they would become failures. The story is semi-autobiographical of Kipling's own school experiences.