There was an instant’s pause, filled by a sounding blast from the market-place, and then the thud of bare feet planted on the floor. “Surely you’re not going to let him dare you——” “Not he; don’t you worry!” It was Bingley who cut Chips short, and Jan thanked him as he slid into his trousers in the dark. His voice was strange, and not without the tremor of high excitement. There was a jingle of curtain rings across the dormitory. Carpenter was out of his partition in defiance of the rules; he appeared dimly at the foot of Jan’s, into which Bingley was already peering over the partition. “Are you off your chump?” demanded Chips. “Not he,” said Bingley again. “He’s only bunging us up!” Bingley might have been an infant Mephistopheles; but he was really only an incredulous, irritated, and rather excited schoolboy. “You’ll see directly,” muttered Jan, slipping his braces over his night-shirt. “You’ll be caught to a certainty, and bunked if you’re caught!” That was Chips, in desperation now. “And a good job too! I’ve had about enough of this place.” That was the Jan of their first term together. “And it’s raining like the very dickens!” This was the child in Crabtree’s corner, an insensible little sinner, who seemed to take the imminent enormity as an absolute matter of course. “So much the better,” said Jan. “I’ll take a brolly and run all the less risk of being seen, and you see if I don’t bring you all something from the fair.” “It’s something he’s gone and got to-day,” whispered Bingley for Chips’s consolation. “It’s all a swizzle, you’ll see.” “You look out of the window in about five minutes,” retorted Jan from the door, “and p’r’aps _you’ll_ see!” And out he actually stole, carrying the clean boots that he had brought up to dormitory in readiness for first school, and leaving Chips in muzzled consternation on the threshold. The rain pelted on the skylight over the stairs. It had been a showery day, but it was a very wet night, and Jan was almost as glad of it as he had just professed himself. He saw a distant complication of wet clothes, but as a mere umbrella among umbrellas he stood a really fair chance of not being seen. It was still only a chance; but that was half the fun. And fun it was, though a terrifying form of fun, and though Jan was already feeling a bit unsound about the knees, he had to go on with it; there was as yet no question in his mind about that, and hardly any looking back at the ridiculous combination of taunt and impulse which had committed him to this mad adventure.