So that now Harpour, Mackworth, and Jones, were confined more and more to their own society, and were forced to keep their misconduct more and more to themselves. They sullenly admitted that they were foiled and thwarted, and from that time forward left the school to recover as fast as it could from their vicious influence. Among their other consolations--for they found themselves shunned on all sides--they proposed to go and have a supper at Dan's. One day, before the events last narrated, Power had seen them go in there. He had sent for them at once, and told them that they must know how strictly this was forbidden, what a wretch Dan was, and how ruinous such visits to his cottage must be. They knew well that if he informed of them they would be instantly expelled, and entreated him with very serious earnestness to pass it over this time, the more so because they had no notion that any monitor would ever tell of them, _because since he had been a monitor, Kenrick had accompanied them there_. Shocked as he was to hear this, it had determined Power not to report them, on the condition, which he made known to the other monitors, and of which he specially and pointedly gave warning to Kenrick, that they would not so offend again. This promise they wilfully broke, feeling perfectly secure, because Dan's cottage was at a remote and lonely part of the shore, where few boys ever walked, and where they had very little chance of being seen, if they took the precaution of entering by a back gate. But within a week of Penn's thrashing, Walter was strolling near the cottage with Eden and Charlie, and having climbed the cliff a little way to pluck for Eden (who had taken to botany) a flower of the yellow horned poppy which was waving there, he saw them go into Dan's door, and with them--as he felt sure--little Wilton. The very moment, however, that he caught sight of them, the fourth boy, seeing him on the cliff, had taken vigorously to his heels and scrambled away behind the rocks. Walter had neither the wish nor the power to overtake him, and as he had not so much _seen_ Wilton as inferred with tolerable certainty that it was he, he only reported Harpour, Mackworth, and Jones to Dr Lane; at the same time sending for Wilton to tell him of his suspicion, and to give him a severe and earnest warning. Dr Lane, on the best possible grounds, had repeatedly announced that he would expel any boy who had any dealings with the scoundrel Dan. He was not likely to swerve from that declaration in any case, still less for the sake of boys whose school career had been so dishonourable and reprobate as that of these three offenders. They were all three publicly expelled without mercy and without delay; and they departed, carrying with them, as they well-deserved to do, the contempt and almost the execration of the great majority of the school.