"And tell her," continued Griffin, "that we've been paying a visit to a nice, kind gentleman, who happens to be raving mad." "And she'd be pleased to hear that he advised us all to run away, and waste no time about it. Where did he advise us to go to? The land of golden dreams? Oh, my crikey, don't I see her face!" Bailey made a remark of a practical kind. "We can get in fast enough, there are always plenty of windows open." It is not impossible that the young gentleman had made an entrance into Mecklemburg House by some such way before. "It's easy enough to get in," said Ellis, "but what are we to say in the morning? It'll take about a week to dry my things, and about a month to get the mud off." "I shouldn't be surprised if old Shane got sacked," chuckled Wheeler. "It will be jolly hard lines if he does," said Ellis. "Oh, what's the odds? he shouldn't have let us go!" Which remark of Wheeler's was pretty good, considering the circumstances under which Mr. Shane's permission had been obtained. Just then Bailey stopped, and began to peer about him in the night. "Have you lost your way?" asked Ellis. "That'll be the best joke of all if you have. Fancy camping out a night like this! We shan't quite be drowned by the morning, but just about almost." "I'm going to cut across this field," said Bailey. "It's ever so far round by the road, but we shall get there in less than no time if we go this way." The suggestion tickled Ellis. "Fancy cutting across fields on a night like this! Oh, my gracious! what will old Mother Fletcher say?" Bailey climbed over a gate, and the others clambered after him. It might be the shortest cut, but it was emphatically the dirtiest. "Why, if they haven't been ploughing it!" cried Griffin, before they had taken half a dozen steps. Apparently they had, and very recently too. The furrows were wide and deep, the soil seemed to be a stiffish clay; walking was exercise of the most hazardous kind. There was an exclamation from some one; but as it appeared that Griffin had only fallen forward on to his nose, his friends were too much occupied with their own proceedings to pay much heed. "I have lost my shoe!" declared Wheeler, immediately after. "Oh, I'm stuck in the mud; I believe I'm planted in this beastly field." "Never mind your shoe, since you've lost your hat already," said Ellis, with ready sympathy. "You might as well leave all the rest of your things behind you, for all the use they'll be after this little spree is over." "I don't know what Bailey calls a short cut," grumbled Griffin. "At the rate I'm going it'll take me about a couple of hours to do a hundred yards." "We shall be home with the milk," said Ellis. "I've lost my other shoe!" cried Wheeler. "No, have you really, though?" "I believe I have, but I don't know whether I have or whether I haven't; all I know is, I've got about a hundred pounds of mud sticking to my feet. I wish Bailey was at Jericho with his short cuts!"