Next moment he was making his way nimbly upstairs. Terence looked round him once, then followed after. The warmth of a bed had become a strangely appealing thought. * * * * * For two hours Harley had slumbered. The last good-nights had all been said. The last lights had been snuffed. Only the great clock over the school, vigilantly marking time like the ghost of some soldier of the king, was still awake and looking far out into the country, when a car came droning down the highroad, branched along the fork that led past the playing fields and stopped beside the school pavilion. There was a moment’s muttered conversation, then out of the car stepped Toby Nicholson. He turned once to the small figure wrapped in rugs that was still reclining in a corner. “You understand?” he said. “Wait here till I’ve spied out the lie of the land. Then I’ll come back and fetch you. I may be some little time, but you must wait.” Bobbie nodded his head obediently, and Toby turned and scrambled over the narrow gate into the school grounds. Off he set along the line of the trees, stepping, had he but known it, almost in the very footprints that Rouse had left in his tracks. He went swiftly, and at times, with a furtive glance around him, he left the shadows and slipped across the open to cut a corner. At last he came to Seymour’s and here he stopped, just as Rouse had stopped at Morley’s, and glanced up at the windows. Everywhere the blinds were drawn. There was not one solitary light. He had expected as much, and now he had to come swiftly to a decision. By hook or by crook he intended to get into the house and rouse Mr Seymour. There were several ways and means. He could ring the bell or batter upon the door with his clenched fists until he was answered. He could throw stones at windows. These methods would, however, necessarily excite undue commotion, and this Toby determined to avoid. Since nothing much could be accomplished before morning by those within, there existed the alternative, of course, of camping out under the trees until the first greyness of the dawn broke through the night, and surreptitiously slipping Bobbie into the house at the first opening of the door, if necessary with the connivance of a servant. On a winter’s night this solution was, however, emphatically inconvenient. There remained, therefore, the only really sound means of entry, that of the break-in. Without any great hesitation Toby decided upon this latter. He had once committed a burglary for the benefit of the cinema, and he saw no valid reason why he should not break into Mr Seymour’s bedroom for the benefit of the school. He cast an inquisitive eye at the window behind which Mr Seymour would be sleeping, and considered the question of the ascent. Mr Seymour was a quiet, rather faded gentleman who affected a hat-guard all the year round and who looked upon school life from the scholarly rather than the magisterial standpoint.