"How do you know?" "Had my eye on them all the time." "Oh!" The other monitors sighed rather enviously. Their chief object in life was not to keep their eye on Kelly and Hicks, but to keep the eye of those freebooters off themselves. "Where are you going? Don't clear out till we have settled something," said Maxwell helplessly, as Pip turned the door-handle. "All right!" said Pip, and was gone. He turned down a passage towards a district known as "the Colony," where the boys' studies were situated. He was not on the track of Kelly and Hicks this time. Another idea had occurred to him--an idea which set the seal of certainty on a series of conjectures which had been forcing themselves upon his reluctant mind for some weeks. After a brief sojourn in a study _en route_--usually known as "the Pub," from the fact that it was always full--into which he was unanimously haled to decide an acrid dispute over certain questions connected with the Outside Edge, he steered a course for Linklater's apartment, which was situated somewhat remotely at the end of the passage. Linklater, by the way, had left tea some time before Mr. Chilford's angry visit. He gave his usual heavy thump on the door, and walked in. Linklater was at home. He sat in an armchair with his back to the door. In his hand he held a red-hot poker, the end of which swayed gently backwards and forwards not more than two inches from the paralysed countenance of Master Butler, who, cut off from retreat by an intervening table, and rigid with terror, was staring helplessly at the glowing point with the thoroughness of a fascinated rabbit. III Hearing the door open, Linklater looked round. Almost simultaneously a brown and muscular hand reached over his right shoulder and whipped the poker from his grasp. "You can clear out, Butler," said Pip. Master Butler departed like a panic-stricken rocket, and Pip and Linklater were left alone. Linklater eyed his friend furtively, with an uneasy grin. He knew that he had to deal with a boy who was his superior in every way, and the fact that the boy was his best friend did not make the coming interview appear any less unpleasant. Pip sat down and used the poker, which he still held in his hand, to burn elaborate holes in his host's mantelpiece. At length he remarked,-- "Link, old man, you are making a bally ass of yourself." "Thanks!" said Linklater laconically. "You are putting me in an awful hole over it, too." "Indeed? Why?" "Well, this sort of thing has got to stop, and I don't quite know how to set about it." "Is it absolutely necessary for you to try? Are you head of the house?" "No, I'm not. But Maxwell is. He's a rabbit, and the next four are rabbits, too. That leaves you and me. By rights you ought to be the man to keep the house on its legs. But you seem rather inclined to--to leave it to me. See?" Linklater glared.