His finger was on his lips as we got out softly into the starlight. I remember how the gravel hurt as we left the smooth flagged margin of the house for the open quad; but the nearer of two long green seats (whereon you prepared your construe for the second-school in the summer term) was mercifully handy; and once in our rubber soles we had no difficulty in scaling the gates beyond the fives-courts. Moreover, we dropped into a very desert of a country road, nor saw a soul when we doubled back beneath the outer study windows, nor heard a foot-fall in the main street of the slumbering town. Our own fell like the night-dews and the petals of the poet; but Raffles ran his arm through mine, and would chatter in whispers as we went. "So you and Nipper had a word--or was it words? I saw you out of the tail of my eye when I was dancing, and I heard you out of the tail of my ear. It sounded like words, Bunny, and I thought I caught my name. He's the most consistent man I know, and the least altered from a boy. But he'll subscribe all right, you'll see, and be very glad I made him." I whispered back that I did not believe it for a moment. Raffles had not heard all Nasmyth had said of him. And neither would he listen to the little I meant to repeat to him; he would but reiterate a conviction so chimerical to my mind that I interrupted in my turn to ask him what ground he had for it. "I've told you already," said Raffles. "I mean to make him." "But how?" I asked. "And when, and where?" "At Philippi, Bunny, where I said I'd see him. What a rabbit you are at a quotation! "'And I think that the field of Philippi Was where Caesar came to an end; But who gave old Brutus the tip, I Can't comprehend!' "You may have forgotten your Shakespeare, Bunny, but you ought to remember that." And I did, vaguely, but had no idea what it or Raffles meant, as I plainly told him. "The theatre of war," he answered--"and here we are at the stage door!" Raffles had stopped suddenly in his walk. It was the last dark hour of the summer night, but the light from a neighboring lamp-post showed me the look on his face as he turned. "I think you also inquired when," he continued. "Well, then, this minute--if you will give me a leg up!" And behind him, scarcely higher than his head, and not even barred, was a wide window with a wire blind, and the name of Nasmyth among others lettered in gold upon the wire. "You're never going to break in?" "This instant, if you'll help me; in five or ten minutes, if you won't." "Surely you didn't bring the--the tools?" He jingled them gently in his pocket. "Not the whole outfit, Bunny. But you never know when you mayn't want one or two. I'm only thankful I didn't leave the lot behind this time. I very nearly did." "I must say I thought you would, coming down here," I said reproachfully.