"Upon my word," he said at last, "it really does seem very like it. It's not hard enough for a bag or a hat-box. It yields distinctly when you kick it. Can you fetch it out with your umbrella, do you think? Shall we tell the guard at the next----? Lord, it's coming out of its own accord. It's a dog! No, my stars--it's the boy, after all!" For Paul, alarmed at the suggestion about the guard, once more felt inclined to risk the worst and reveal himself. Begrimed with coal, smeared with whitewash, and covered with dust and flue, he crawled slowly out and gazed imploringly up at his fellow-passengers. After the first shock of surprise they lay back in their seats and laughed till they cried. "Why, you young rascal!" they said, when they recovered breath, "you don't mean to say you've been under there the whole time?" "I have indeed," said Paul. "I--I didn't like to come out before." "And are you the boy all this fuss was about? Yes? And we kept the schoolmaster off without knowing it! Why, this is splendid, capital! You're something like a boy, you little dog, you! This is the best joke I've heard for many a day!" "I hope," said Paul, "I haven't inconvenienced you. I could not help it, really." "Inconvenienced us? Gad, your schoolmaster came very near inconveniencing us and you too. But there, he won't trouble any of us now. To think of our swearing by all our gods there was no boy in here, and vowing he shouldn't come in, while you were lying down there under the seat all the time! Why, it's lovely! The boy's got pluck and manners too. Shake hands, young gentleman, you owe us no apologies. I haven't had such a laugh for many a day!" "Then you--you won't give me up?" faltered poor Paul. "Well," said the one who was called Goldicutt, and who was a jovial old gentleman with a pink face and white whiskers, "we're not exactly going to take the trouble of getting out at the next station, and bringing you back to Dufferton, just to oblige that hot-tempered master of yours, you know; he hasn't been so particularly civil as to deserve that." "But if he were to telegraph and get some one to stop me at St. Pancras?" said Paul nervously. "Ah, he might do that, to be sure--sharp boy this--well, as we've gone so far, I suppose we must go through with the business now and smuggle the young scamp past the detectives, eh, Travers?" The younger man addressed assented readily enough, for the Doctor had been so unfortunate as to prejudice them both from the first by his unjustifiable suspicions, and it is to be feared they had no scruples in helping to outwit him.