It was all very romantic and thrilling. Edwin, conscious now for the first time of the extreme foolhardiness of his racecourse adventure, felt himself a greater dog than ever. And then, when the stage was set, and the audience attuned to an atmosphere of tragedy by so much thunder-weather, Griffin, from whom the glamour of the heroic had been gradually fading in the shame of his captivity, achieved the dramatic. He bolted. With a ladder of knotted sheets he climbed down the waterspout and disappeared into open country. Griffin lived somewhere in Kent. In half a day he would reach home. For Selby’s house it was a great morning. Edwin, in spite of his hatred of Griffin, shared in the general elation. Such private feuds were small concerns in the face of the common enemy. Douglas was flown with insolence. “I knew old Griff would do them,” he said. “By God . . . that’s a man if you like. It’s the nastiest knock old Selby’s had in his life. Think of it . . . a chap with a weak heart like old Griff shinning down a waterspout!” Edwin wondered if the meeting in the Big Schoolroom would be off, or whether, perhaps, it would be postponed and Griffin hauled back from the bosom of his family to go through with it. “You silly ass,” said Douglas. “Of course they can’t fetch him back. He’s done them brown.” But the morning went on without any alteration in the programme. At twelve o’clock the solemn procession began: the whole black-coated population of St. Luke’s filtering through narrow corridors and the wide folding doors into the big Schoolroom. The whole business was impressive; for nobody spoke and no sound came from the crowd but the drag of slowly-moving feet and arms that brushed one another. They were like a flock of sheep driven away from market on a narrow road between dusty hedges, for none of them knew what was coming. Rumour was busy with whispers. Griffin had been found in a ditch with his leg broken and had been hauled back to fulfil his sentence. Like Monmouth, Edwin thought. Griffin, in company with the pale skivvy from “D” had been arrested by the police at Waterloo. Other rumours, less credible, as, for instance, that Cleaver, meeting a jockey friend of his in a little pub called the Grenadier in the Downs Road, had walked into a taproom full of School House bloods on Sunday morning. Indeed, these were strenuous days.