Lessons were only just over in the school-room, and he found David putting away his books, while Pennie and Nancy, still with their hats and cloaks on, were talking very fast about all they had seen and done in Nearminster. How happy they looked! They had nothing dreadful on their minds. It made Ambrose all the more anxious to have someone to bear his secret with him, and he went softly up to David and said in a low voice: "I want to speak to you." "All right!" said David rather unwillingly, for he wanted to hear more about Nearminster and Kettles. "Not here," whispered Ambrose. "Upstairs--in the museum. It's very important." David turned and looked at his brother. Ambrose's cheeks were scarlet, his eyes had a scared expression, and his hair was sticking up in spikes as if he had been running his hands through it. At these certain signs of excitement David at once concluded that something had happened. He hastily thrust away his last books, and the two boys left the school-room. "Is it a ghost?" he asked as they ran up the flight of stairs leading to the museum. "Much worse," returned Ambrose. "It's something real. It's awful." The museum looked bare and cold, and rather dusty, as if it had been neglected lately; its deal shelves with their large white labels and wide empty spaces seemed to gape hungrily--a cheerless place altogether, with nothing comfortable or encouraging about it. The boys sat down facing each other on two boxes, and Ambrose at once began his story. Alarming as the news was, he had a faint hope while he was telling it that David might not think it so bad as he did. David always took things calmly, and his matter-of-fact way of looking at them was often a support to Ambrose, whose imagination made him full of fears. So now when he had finished he looked wistfully at his brother and said, in a tone full of awe: "Should you think we really are _thieves_?" David's blue eyes got very large and round, but before answering this question he put another: "What can they do to thieves?" "Put them in prison, and make them work hard for ever so long," replied Ambrose. "They used to hang them," he added gloomily. "I don't believe father would let them put us in prison," said David. "He couldn't help it," said Ambrose. "Nobody's father can. Don't you remember when Giles Brown stole a silver mug, his father walked ten miles to ask them to let him off, and they wouldn't?" "Well, but,"--said David, feeling that there was a difference between the two cases--"he stole a thing out of a house, and we didn't; and his father was a hedger and ditcher, and our father is vicar of Easney." "That wouldn't matter," said Ambrose. "It would depend on Miss Barnicroft. She wouldn't let us off. She said she couldn't bear boys. She'd be glad to have us punished." He rested his chin on his hand and stared forlornly on the ground. "It's telling father I mind most," he added presently, "much more than going to prison."