r which he
ran across to Outwood's.

Fortune had favored his undertaking by decreeing that a stout drainpipe
should pass up the wall within a few inches of his and Psmith's study.
On the first day of term, it may be remembered he had wrenched away the
wooden bar which bisected the window frame, thus rendering exit and
entrance almost as simple as they had been for Wyatt during Mike's first
term at Wrykyn.

He proceeded to scale this water pipe.

He had got about halfway up when a voice from somewhere below cried,
"Who's that?"

16

PURSUIT

These things are Life's Little Difficulties. One can never tell
precisely how one will act in a sudden emergency. The right thing for
Mike to have done at this crisis was to have ignored the voice, carried
on up the water pipe, and through the study window, and gone to bed. It
was extremely unlikely that anybody could have recognized him at night
against the dark background of the house. The position then would have
been that somebody in Mr. Outwood's house had been seen breaking in
after lights-out; but it would have been very difficult for the
authorities to have narrowed the search down any further than that.
There were thirty-four boys in Outwood's, of whom about fourteen were
much the same size and build as Mike.

The suddenness, however, of the call caused Mike to lose his head. He
made the strategic error of sliding rapidly down the pipe, and running.

There were two gates to Mr. Outwood's front garden. The drive ran in a
semicircle, of which the house was the center. It was from the
right-hand gate, nearest to Mr. Downing's house, that the voice had
come, and, as Mike came to the ground, he saw a stout figure galloping
toward him from that direction. He bolted like a rabbit for the other
gate. As he did so, his pursuer again gave tongue.

"Oo-oo-oo yer!" was the exact remark.

Whereby Mike recognized him as the school sergeant. "Oo-oo-oo yer!" was
that militant gentleman's habitual way of beginning a conversation.

With this knowledge, Mike felt easier in his mind. Sergeant Collard was
a man of many fine qualities (notably a talent for what he was wont to
call "spott'n," a mysterious gift which he exercised on the rifle
range), but he could not run. There had been a time in his hot youth
when he had sprinted like an untamed mustang in pursuit of volatile
Pathans in Indian hill wars, but Time, increasing his girth, had taken
from him the taste for such exe