Fenn half thought of making a violent assault on the door. He refrained on reflecting that it would be useless. If he could break it open--which, in all probability, he could not--there would be trouble such as he had never come across in his life. He was not sure it would not be an offence for which he would be rendered liable to fine or imprisonment. At any rate, it would mean the certain detection of his visit to the town. So he gave the thing up, resolving to return on the morrow and reopen negotiations. For the present, what he had to do was to get safely back to his house. He had lost his watch, his cap with his name in it was in the hands of an evil old man who evidently bore him a grudge, and he had to run the gauntlet of three house-masters and get to bed _via_ a study-window. Few people, even after the dullest of plays, have returned from the theatre so disgusted with everything as did Fenn. Reviewing the situation as he ran with long, easy strides over the road that led to Kay's, he found it devoid of any kind of comfort. Unless his mission in quest of the cap should prove successful, he was in a tight place. It is just as well that the gift of second sight is accorded to but few. If Fenn could have known at this point that his adventures were only beginning, that what had taken place already was but as the overture to a drama, it is possible that he would have thrown up the sponge for good and all, entered Kay's by way of the front door--after knocking up the entire household--and remarked, in answer to his house-master's excited questions, "Enough! Enough! I am a victim of Fate, a Toad beneath the Harrow. Sack me tomorrow, if you like, but for goodness' sake let me get quietly to bed now." As it was, not being able to "peep with security into futurity," he imagined that the worst was over. He began to revise this opinion immediately on turning in at Kay's gate. He had hardly got half-way down the drive when the front door opened and two indistinct figures came down the steps. As they did so his foot slipped off the grass border on which he was running to deaden the noise of his steps, and grated sharply on the gravel. "What's that?" said a voice. The speaker was Mr Kay. "What's what?" replied a second voice which he recognised as Mr Mulholland's. "Didn't you hear a noise?" "'I heard the water lapping on the crag,'" replied Mr Mulholland, poetically. "It was over there," persisted Mr Kay. "I am certain I heard something--positively certain, Mulholland. And after that burglary at the school house--"