“Yes, but don’t you see that Stalky isn’t here, you owl!” said McTurk. “Take down the key, and look sorrowful. King’ll only jaw you for half an hour. I’m going to read in the lower form-room.” “But it’s always me,” mourned Beetle. “Wait till we see,” said McTurk, hopefully. “I don’t know any more than you do what Stalky means, but it’s something. Go down and draw King’s fire. You’re used to it.” No sooner had the key turned in the door than the lid of the coal-box, which was also the window-seat, lifted cautiously. It had been a tight fit, even for the lithe Stalky, his head between his knees, and his stomach under his right ear. From a drawer in the table he took a well-worn catapult, a handful of buckshot, and a duplicate key of the study; noiselessly he raised the window and kneeled by it, his face turned to the road, the wind-sloped trees, the dark levels of the Burrows, and the white line of breakers falling nine-deep along the Pebbleridge. Far down the steep-banked Devonshire lane he heard the husky hoot of the carrier’s horn. There was a ghost of melody in it, as it might have been the wind in a gin-bottle essaying to sing, “It’s a way we have in the Army.” Stalky smiled a tight-lipped smile, and at extreme range opened fire: the old horse half wheeled in the shafts. “Where he gwaine tu?” hiccoughed Rabbits-Eggs. Another buckshot tore through the rotten canvas tilt with a vicious zipp. “_Habet_!” murmured Stalky, as Rabbits-Eggs swore into the patient night, protesting that he saw the “dommed colleger” who was assaulting him. * * * * * “And so,” King was saying in a high head voice to Beetle, whom he had kept to play with before Manders minor, well knowing that it hurts a Fifth-form boy to be held up to a fag’s derision, “and so, Master Beetle, in spite of all our verses, which we are so proud of, when we presume to come into direct conflict with even so humble a representative of authority as myself, for instance, we are turned out of our studies, are we not?” “Yes, sir,” said Beetle, with a sheepish grin on his lips and murder in his heart. Hope had nearly left him, but he clung to a well-established faith that never was Stalky so dangerous as when he was invisible. “You are _not_ required to criticise, thank you. Turned out of our studies, we are, just as if we were no better than little Manders minor. Only inky schoolboys we are, and must be treated as such.” Beetle pricked up his ears, for Rabbits-Eggs was swearing savagely on the road, and some of the language entered at the upper sash. King believed in ventilation. He strode to the window gowned and majestic, very visible in the gaslight. “I zee ’un! I zee ’un!” roared Rabbits-Eggs, now that he had found a visible foe--another shot from the darkness above. “Yiss, yeou, yeou long-nosed, fower-eyed, gingy-whiskered beggar! Yeu’m tu old for such goin’s on. Aie! Poultice yeour nose, I tall ’ee! Poultice yeour long nose!”