"Beetle! You're oppressed and insulted and bullied by that beast King. Don't you feel it?" "Mad! Quite mad!" said Stalky to the visitors, as one exhibiting strange beasts. "Beetle reads an ass called Brownin', and McTurk reads an ass called Ruskin; and-" "Ruskin isn't an ass," said McTurk. "He's almost as good as the Opium Eater. He says 'we're children of noble races trained by surrounding art.' That means me, and the way I decorated the study when you two badgers would have stuck up brackets and Christmas cards. Child of a noble race, trained by surrounding art, stop reading, or I'll shove a pilchard down your neck!" "It's two to one," said Stalky, warningly, and Beetle closed the book, in obedience to the law under which he and his companions had lived for six checkered years. The visitors looked on delighted. Number Five study had a reputation for more variegated insanity than the rest of the school put together; and so far as its code allowed friendship with outsiders it was polite and open-hearted to its neighbors on the same landing. "What rot do you want to do now?" said Beetle. "King! War!" said McTurk, jerking his head toward the wall, where hung a small wooden West African war-drum, a gift to McTurk from a naval uncle. "Then we shall be turned out of the study again," said Beetle, who loved his flesh-pots. "Mason turned us out for -just warbling on it." Mason was the mathematical master who had testified in common-room. "Warbling?-O my!" said Abanazar. "We couldn't hear ourselves speak in our study when you played the infernal thing. What's the good of getting turned out of your study, anyhow?" "We lived in the form-rooms for a week, too," said Beetle, tragically. "And it was beastly cold." "so-so YOU DESPISE ME, MASTER GIGADIBS, DO YOU?" ute he let us go back the rats stopped. Mason's a little shy of us now, but there was no evidence." "Jolly well there wasn't," said Stalky, "when I got out on the roof and dropped the beastly things down his chimney. But, look here, question is, are our characters good enough just now to stand a study row?" 64 66 Never mind mine," said Beetle. King swears I haven't any." "I'm not thinking of you," Stalky returned, scornfully. "You aren't going up for the army, you old bat. I don't want to be expelled-and the Head's getting rather shy of us, too." "Rot!" said McTurk. "The Head never expels except for beastliness or stealing. But I forgot; you and Stalky are thieves-regular burglars." The visitors gasped, but Stalky interpreted the parable with large grins. "Well, you know, that little beast Manders minor saw Beetle and me hammerin' McTurk's trunk open in the dormitory when we took his watch last month. Of course Manders sneaked to Mason, and Mason solemnly took it up as a case of theft, to get even with us about the rats." "That delivered Mason into our hands," said McTurk, blandly. "We were awfully nice to him, 'cause he was a new master It and wanted to win the confidence of the boys. Pity he draws inferences, though. Stalky went to his study and pretended to "Ye-es, but Mason's rooms were filled with rats every day we were out. took him a week to draw the inference," said McTurk. "He loathes rats. Min blub, and told Mason he'd lead a new life if Mason would let him off this time, but Mason wouldn't. Said it was his duty to report him to the Head." "Vindictive swine!" said Beetle. "It was all those rats! Then I blubbed, too, and Stalky confessed that he'd been a thief in regular practice for six years, ever since he came to the school; and that I'd taught him-à la Fagin. Mason turned white with joy; thought he had us on toast." Gorgeous! Gorgeous!" said Dick Four. We never heard of this." "Course not. Mason kept it jolly quiet. He wrote down all our statements on impot-paper. There wasn't anything he wouldn't believe," said Stalky. "And handed it all up to the Head, with an extempore prayer. It took about forty pages," said Beetle. "I helped a lot. 66 And then, you crazy idiots?" said Abanazar. "Oh, we were sent for; and Stalky asked to have the depositions' read out, and the Head knocked him spinning into a waste-paper basket. Then he gave us eight cuts apiece-welters-for-fortakin' unheard-of liberties with a new master. I saw his shoulders shaking when we went out. Do you know," said Beetle, pensively, "that Mason can't look at us now in second lesson without blushing? We three stare at him sometimes till he "He read Eric, or Little by Little, said McTurk; "so we gave him St. Winifred's, or the World of School.' They spent all their spare time stealing at St. Winifred's, when they weren't praying or getting drunk at pubs. Well, that was only a week ago, and the Head's a little bit shy of us. He called it constructive devilry. Stalky invented it all." "Not the least good having a row with a master unless you can make him ridiculous," said Stalky, extended at ease on the hearth-rug. "If Mason didn't know Number Five-well, he's learnt, that's all. Now, my dearly beloved 'earers "-Stalky curled his legs under him and addressed the company-" we've got that strong, perseverin' man King on our hands. He went miles out of his way to provoke a conflict." (Here Stalky snapped down the black silk domino and assumed the air of a judge.) "He has oppressed Beetle, McTurk, and me, privatim et seriatim, one by one, as he could catch us. But now he has insulted Number Five up in the musicroom, and in the presence of these-these ossifers of the Ninety-third, wot look like hairdressers. Benjamin, we must make him cry 'Capivi!'' Stalky's reading did not include Browning or Ruskin. 66 And, besides," said McTurk, "he's a "TO FIND MCTURK, STALKY, AND THE OTHERS OF THE COMPANY IN HIS STUDY ENJOYING AN UNLIMITED BREW Philistine, a basket-hanger. He wears a tartan tie. Ruskin says any man who wears a tartan tie will, without doubt, be damned everlastingly. "Bravo, McTurk," said Tertius; "I (Gummy! What a sentence!) thought he was only a beast." "He's that, too, of course, but he's worse. He has a china basket with blue ribbons and a pink kitten on it, hung up in his window to grow musk in. You know when I got all that old oak carvin' out of Bideford Church, when they were restoring it (Ruskin says any man who'll restore a church is an unmitigated sweep), and stuck it up here with glue? Well, King came in and wanted to know whether we'd done it with a fret-saw ! Yah! He is the King of baskethangers!" Down went McTurk's inky thumb. over an imaginary arena full of bleeding Kings. "Placetne, child of a gen erous race! cried to Beetle. 44 he Well," began from Beetle, doubtfully, "he comes Balliol, but I'm going to give the beast a chance. You see I can always make him hop with some more He can't poetry. To hold fast where a steel chain snaps (Full stop.)" 46 'Don't understand a word of it," said Stalky. "More ass you! Construe," said Mc "YESS, YEOU, YEOU LONG-NOSED, FOWER-EYED, GINGY-WHISK ERED BEGGAR!" report me to the Beetle opened the book on the table, ran his finger down a page, and began at ran dom: Turk. "Those six Johnnies scragged the Czar, and left no evidence. Actum est with King." "He gave me that book, too," said Beetle, licking his lips: "There's a great text in Galatians, Once you trip on it entails Twenty-nine distinct window. "Manders minor is with him." "Safest place for him just now," said Beetle. "Then you chaps had better clear out," said Stalky politely to the visitors. "Tisn't fair to mix you up in a study row. Besides, we can't afford to have evidence." "Are you going to begin at once?" said Aladdin. 66 "Immediately, if not sooner," said Stalky, and turned out the gas. Strong, perseverin' man is King. Make him cry Capivi.' G'way, Binjamin." The company retreated to their own neat and spacious study with expectant souls. When Stalky blows out his nostrils like a horse," said Aladdin to the Empe- see that Stalky isn't here, you owl!" said ror of China, "he's on the war-path. McTurk. "Take down the key, and look Wonder what King will get." sorrowful. King'll only jaw you for half "Num- an hour. I'm going to read in the lower form-room." "Beans," said the Emperor. ber Five always pays in full. "Wonder if I ought to take any notice of it officially," said Abanazar, who had just remembered he was a prefect. "It's none of your business, Pussy. Besides, if you did, we'd have them hostile to us; and we shouldn't be able to do any work," said Aladdin. "They've begun already." "But it's always me," mourned Beetle. "Wait till we see," said McTurk, hopefully. "I don't know any more than you do what Stalky means, but it's something. Get out and draw King's fire. You're used to it." No sooner had the key turned in the door than the lid of the coal-box, which Now that West African war-drum had was also the window-seat, lifted cautiously. been made to signal across estuaries and It had been a tight fit, even for the lithe deltas. Number Five was forbidden to Stalky, his head between his knees, and wake the diabolical engine within ear- his stomach under his right ear. From a shot of the school. But a deep, devastat- drawer in the table he took a well-worn ing drone filled the passages as McTurk catapult, a handful of buckshot, and a and Beetle scientifically rubbed the top. duplicate key of the study; noiselessly he Anon it changed into the blare of trum- raised the window and kneeled by it, his pets-of savage pursuing trumpets. Then, face turned to the road, the wind-sloped as McTurk slapped one side, smooth with trees, the dark levels of the Burrows, and the blood of ancient sacrifice, the roar the white line of breakers falling nine deep broke into short coughing howls such as along the Pebble-ridge. Far down the the wounded gorilla throws in his native steep-banked Devonshire lane he heard forest. These were followed by the wrath the husky hoot of the carrier's horn. of King-three steps at a time, up the stair- There was a ghost of melody in it, as it case, with a dry whir of the gown. Alad- might have been the wind in a gin-bottle din and company, listening, squeaked with essaying to sing, "It's a way we have in excitement as the door crashed open. King the army." stumbled into the darkness, and cursed Stalky smiled a tight-lipped smile, and those performers by the gods of Balliol at extreme range opened fire: the old and quiet repose. "Turned out for a week," said Aladdin, holding the study door on the crack." Key to be brought down to his study in five minutes. 'Brutes! Barbarians! Savages! Children!' He's quite agitated. 'Arrah, Patsy, mind the baby,' he sang in a whisper as he clung to the door-knob, dancing a noiseless war-dance. King went downstairs again, and Beetle and McTurk lit the gas to confer with Stalky. But Stalky had vanished. "Looks like no end of a mess," said Beetle, collecting his books and mathematical instrument case. "A week in the form-rooms isn't any advantage to us." "Yes, but don't you direct conflict with even so humble a representative of authority as myself, for instance, we are turned out of our studies, are we not?" "Yes, sir," said Beetle, with a sheepish grin on his lips and murder in his heart. Hope had nearly left him, but he clung to a well-established faith that never was Stalky so dangerous as when he was invisible. "You are not required to criticise, thank you. Turned out of our studies, we are just as if we were no better than little Manders minor. Only inky schoolboys we are, and must be treated as such." Beetle pricked up his ears, for RabbitsEggs was swearing savagely on the road, and some of the language entered at the upper sash. King believed in ventilation. He strode to the window, gowned and majestic, very visible in the gaslight. "I zee 'un! I zee 'un!" roared RabbitsEggs, now that he had found a visible foe -another shot from the darkness above. "Yess, yeou, yeou long-nosed, fowereyed, gingy-whiskered beggar! Yeu'm tu old for such goin's on. Aie! Poultice yeour nose, I tall 'ee! Poultice yeour long nose!" Beetle's heart leaped up within him. Somewhere, somehow, he knew Stalky moved behind these manifestations. There was hope and the prospect of revenge. He would embody the suggestion about the nose in deathless verse. King threw up the window, and sternly rebuked Rabbits-Eggs. But the carrier was beyond fear or fawning. He had descended from the cart, and was gasping by the roadside. It all fell swiftly as a dream. Manders minor raised his hand to his head with a cry, as a jagged flint cannoned on to some fine tree-calf bindings in the bookshelf. Another quoited along the writing-table. Beetle made zealous feint to stop it, and in that endeavor overturned a student's lamp, which dripped, via King's papers and some choice books, greasily on to a Persian rug. There was much broken glass on the window-seat; the china basketMcTurk's aversion-cracked to flinders, had dropped her musk plant and its earth over the red rep cushions; Manders minor was bleeding profusely from a cut on the cheek-bone, and King, using strange words, every one of which Beetle treasured, ran forth to find the school-sergeant, that Rabbits-Eggs might be instantly cast into jail. "Poor chap!" said Beetle, with a false, feigned sympathy. "Let it bleed a little. That'll prevent apoplexy," and he held the blind head skillfully over the table, and |