“I really can’t――――” Then Hugh amended his answer. “Search me,” he said. They talked desultorily for a while. Hugh learned that the second and presumably older boy was named Struthers. Struthers boasted of the junior class’s success in pulling the meeting off and told how he had put lower middle off the track by writing a note to one of their members announcing the affair for Saturday night and purposely dropping it in the corridor of School Hall. Struthers chuckled a lot about that, but Twining appeared incapable of seeing humor in anything just now. He was all for putting his head out the window and calling for help, but Hugh vetoed that plan and threatened to punch the first one who tried it. “A silly-looking lot we’d be,” he said disgustedly, “if the masters had to come up here and free us! We’d be laughed at all over school. If they don’t let us out pretty soon I’ll see if I can climb around to the next window. It’s only about four or five feet from this one, and if there’s anything to hold on to I can do it.” “You might fall and hurt yourself,” sniffed Twining. “I don’t think so. It isn’t far to the ground, for that matter. If we could find a rope or something I might be able to drop. Anyone got a vesta?” “A vest on?” asked Struthers. “No, but we could tie our jackets together and――――” “I said a vesta, a match,” laughed Hugh. “Tying our jackets together isn’t a bad idea, though. If I can’t make it by the window――――” He stopped and listened. Ten o’clock was sounding. “Now we’ll all be hung together,” he said cheerfully. “If I get caught coming in after ten I’ll get ballywhack too. I’m going to have a look at that window.” CHAPTER IX CATHCART, PROCTOR Hugh thrust his body through the window again. No one was in sight along the front. By leaning well out he could see the lighted windows of Number 29 Lothrop, and he smiled as he reflected that Bert was probably wondering what had become of his roommate. Then he viewed the next window, some five feet distant. The sills were broad and extended a few inches beyond the casements, but Hugh doubted that he would be able to stretch his legs far enough to reach, even could he find anything to hold on to. He crawled out on the sill, to the alarm of the hysterical Twining, and, while keeping a firm hold of the window sash, felt about over the bricks in search of some projection to cling to. In the end he had to return to the classroom defeated. That avenue of escape was out of the question. The distance to the ground didn’t look far, but it must be, he realized, about twenty feet, and that meant a drop of fifteen feet, enough to shake one up considerably. But by knotting their coats together it might be done. [Illustration: “That avenue of escape was out of the question.”]