The next morning they found the excitement greater than ever. All who were in the main building had heard the noises of the night, and some in the boarding-house had heard the toll of the bell. Jiggins was sad and exceedingly solemn. Bogud went about saying that none of them could tell what might happen; which language might be taken to signify an undeniable truism; or, on the other hand, it might be considered as a suggestion of the existence of some profound, gloomy, and inscrutable mystery. Bogud rather preferred that it should be taken in that light. Muckle, Johnny, Sammy, and Billymack, all announced that they thought there was something in it, and shook their heads with dark meaning and impressive emphasis over the whole business. Pat was as usual, only a little more so. He was active in all kinds of hints. He refused to tell his own experience of the night, but suggested something grand, gloomy, and peculiar. He looked like one who wished none to question him about the secrets of his prison house. He expressed a mournful resignation to that hard fate which made him the neighbor of the fearful denizens of the garret, and meekly, but firmly, refused the offers of several boys to give him accommodation till the trouble should cease. Also, Pat had an excellent appetite, and his ruddy face and bright eyes belied the cultivated mournfulness of his expression. Bart had gone up into the cupola before breakfast, and had found that the string was taken away. He at once concluded that Pat had been up, and had quietly removed it for the day. If he had felt any consternation at having the string jerked from his hands, he had, no doubt, got completely over it, and probably attributed it to some ordinary cause, very different from the real one. Pat’s demeanor was such that the boys saw his evident determination to keep up the excitement. He went about as before among the small boys, heightening their fears, and giving any number of dark suggestions to their excited imaginations. Bogud, and Jiggins, and Sammy, and Johnny, and Billymack, and Muckle also sought Pat’s society, and left it more confirmed than ever in their opinions. Jiggins was more than ever convinced that it was a deeply solemn season. In fact, he kept saying so to everybody all day long. The teachers could not be ignorant of the excitement, but they took no notice of it. They thought it was some, harmless trick of some of the more mischievous boys, which did not call for their intervention as yet, but would probably be revealed in the natural course of things. So the boys were all left to themselves. At nine o’clock the school was once more opened, after so many delays, and the duties of the new term commenced.