eved in it keenly from beginning to end.

Dick Bultitude had been a valued _raconteur_, it appeared, and his
father found accordingly, to his disgust, that he was expected to amuse
them with a story. When he clearly understood the idea, he rejected it
with so savage a snarl, that he soon found it necessary to retire under
the bedclothes to escape the general indignation that followed.

Finding that he did not actively resent it (the real Dick would have had
the occupant of the nearest bed out by the ears in a minute!), they
profited by his prudence to come to his bedside, where they pillowed his
weary head (with their own pillows) till the slight offered them was
more than avenged.

After that, Mr. Bultitude, with the breath half beaten out of his body,
lay writhing and spluttering on his hard, rough bed till long after
silence had fallen over the adjoining beds, and the sleepy hum of talk
in the other bedrooms had died away.

Then he, too, drifted off into wild and troubled dreams, which, at their
maddest, were scattered into blankness by a sudden and violent shock,
which jerked him, clutching and grasping at nothing, on to the cold,
bare boards, where he rolled, shivering.

"An earthquake!" he thought, "an explosion ... gas--or dynamite! He must
go and call the children ... Boaler ... the plate!"

But the reality to which he woke was worse still. Tipping and Coker had
been patiently pinching themselves to keep awake until their enemy
should be soundly asleep, in order to enjoy the exquisite pleasure of
letting down the mattress; and, too dazed and frightened even to swear,
Paul gathered up his bedclothes and tried to draw them about him as well
as he might, and seek sleep, which had lost its security.

The Garuda Stone had done one grim and cruel piece of work at least in
its time.

7. _Cutting the Knot_

"A Crowd is not Company; And Faces are but a Gallery of Pictures;
And Talke but a _Tinckling Cymball_, where there is no _Love_."
--BACON.

Once more Mr. Bultitude rose betimes, dressed noiselessly, and stole
down to the cold schoolroom, where one gas-jet was burning palely--for
the morning was raw and foggy.

This time, however, he was not alone. Mr. Blinkhorn was sitting at his
little table in the corner, correcting exercises, with his chilly hands
cased in worsted mittens. He looked up as Paul came in, and nodded
kindly.

Paul went strai