"No," said the master; "no news. Every place has been searched where he would be likely to be, except the mountain. It seems a very off-chance that he has gone up there; still, it is possible. He has been on it once or twice before. I am going there now. Would you care to come too?" The captain gratefully acquiesced. For a week he had been chafing at the doctor's orders that no boy should go beyond the bounds. His request to be allowed to undertake this very expedition had been twice refused already. "The doctor has given you an _exeat_ if you wish to go," said Mr Stratton. "We are to take a guide, and it is quite understood we may be late in getting back. I shall be glad of your company." Yorke was ready in ten minutes--thankful at last to be allowed to do something, yet secretly doubting if anything would come of this forlorn quest. Apart from Rollitt, however, good did come of it to Fellsgarth. For during the long walk master and boy got to understand one another better than ever before. With a common ambition for the welfare of the School, and a common trouble at the dissensions which had split it up during the present term, they also discovered a common hope for better times ahead. They discussed all sorts of plans, and exchanged confidences about all sorts of difficulties. And all the while they felt drawn close to one another, exchanging the ordinary relations of master and boy for those of friend and friend. Some of my readers may say that Mr Stratton must have been a very foolish master to give himself away to a boy, or that Yorke must have been a very presuming boy to talk so familiarly to a master. Who cares what they were, if they and Fellsgarth were the better for that morning's walk? "In many ways," said Mr Stratton, "a head boy has as much responsibility for the good of a school as a head-master--always more than an assistant master. You could wreck the School in a week if you chose; and it is in your hands to pull it together more than any of us masters, however much we should like to do it. And you'll do it, old fellow!" And so they turned up the lane that led round to the back of the mountain. The news that Mr Stratton and the captain had gone up Hawk's Pike to look for Rollitt soon spread through Fellsgarth that morning. The souls of our friends the juniors were seriously stirred by it. Their promise--or shall we say threat?--to organise a search-party up the mountain on their own account had been lost sight of somewhat in the exciting distractions of the last twenty-four hours; but now that they found the ground cut from under their feet they were very indignant. Secretly, no doubt, they were a little relieved to find that they had been forestalled in the perilous venture of a winter ascent of the formidable pike they had such good cause to remember. It was a mean trick of Yorke's to "chowse" them out of the credit, they protested. Now he would get all the glory, and they would get none.