It must have been a solumn site by the lite of the candle-end when we began to fight tooth-and-nail for the pistell which could go off. We were both desperet, and it was reelly a battle to deside which should be the leeder of the enterprise and which should be merely the gang. Then, while we wresled and straned every nerve, a curious thing happened, for we fell against the candle-end, stuck on the top of a stick, and the candle-end fell against the side of the hut, and the hut, being made of wood, with walls of dried heather, was very inflameable and cort fire almost immediately. And then Bailey sed we must aggree to settle our dispute later on and fli at once. So we each took our own pistell, and were just going to leave the scene, when, to our grate horror, we herd voices, and among them the voices of Browne and Mainwaring, who were, of corse, house-masters at Merivale. Exhorsted though we were, me and Bailey made a terrible effort to escape, and I think we mite have done so even then, but, oweing to the moon and two other men who were with Mainwaring, we could not reach an impennetrable part of the wood, and finally Mainwaring cort me, and a man cort Bailey, and they dragged us into the light of the blazing ruins of the hut, and we found out that Browne and Mainwaring had come after us, like beestly blood-hounds, and had met the keeper, who told them he had been fired upon, and then the unfortunate burning of the hut had directed their steps towards us. And it’s a lesson in a way, showing what risks it is for buckeneers to fall out among themselves at kritikal moments. Of corse we had to walk back merely as prisoners of Mainwaring, but Bailey told me not to answer questions and rather let them cut our tongues out than know the truth. So they didn’t get anything out of us, and when we got back, at two o’clock in the morning, Dunston was up to meet us; and by that time, what with cold and bruises and the failure of the skeem, I wasn’t equal to defying Dunston, and merely sed we wanted to change our corse of life for something different, and had started to do so. And I also sed that burning the hut was an axsident which might have happened to anybody. And Bailey sed the same. Then Doctor Dunston sent for the matron, and we had brandy-and-water and a hot bath, which was very refreshing to me, but Bailey sed biterly when he was in it that he had thought that morning never to have had a bath again. He also sed we should be put in sepperate bedrooms that night, and that if either of us got an opportunety to eskape, it was his duty to reskue the other. But I sed I didn’t want to eskape, being fritefully sleepy and exhorsted, and I sed that if he eskaped he needn’t trubble to reskue me, becorse if I returned again to being a buckeneer it certinnly wouldn’t be with him.