of their elders with a freedom, fluency, and point that
would have amazed their parents. The blow fell without warning. Stalky
upset a form crowded with small boys among their own cooking utensils,
McTurk raided the untidy lockers as a terrier digs at a rabbit-hole,
while Beetle poured ink upon such heads as he could not appeal to with
a Smith's Classical Dictionary. Three brisk minutes accounted for many
silkworms, pet larvae, French exercises, school caps, half-prepared
bones and skulls, and a dozen pots of home-made sloe jam. It was a great
wreckage, and the form-room looked as though three conflicting tempests
had smitten it.

"Phew!" said Stalky, drawing breath outside the door (amid groans of
"Oh, you beastly ca-ads! You think yourselves awful funny," and so
forth). "_That's_ all right. Never let the sun go down upon your wrath.
Rummy little devils, fags. Got no notion o' combinin'."

"Six of 'em sat on my head when I went in after Manders minor," said
Beetle. "I warned 'em what they'd get, though."

"Everybody paid in full--beautiful feelin'," said McTurk absently, as
they strolled along the corridor. "Don't think we'd better say much
about King, though, do you, Stalky?"

"Not _much_. Our line is injured innocence, of course--same as when the
Sergeant reported us on suspicion of smoking in the bunkers. If I hadn't
thought of buyin' the pepper and spillin' it all over our clothes,
he'd have smelt us. King was gha-astly facetious about that. 'Called us
bird-stuffers in form for a week."

"Ah, King hates the Natural History Society because little Hartopp is
president. Mustn't do anything in the Coll. without glorifyin' King,"
said McTurk. "But he must be a putrid ass, know, to suppose at our time
o' life we'd go and stuff birds like fags."

"Poor old King!" said Beetle. "He's unpopular in Common-room, and
they'll chaff his head off about Rabbits-Eggs. Golly! How lovely! How
beautiful! How holy! But you should have seen his face when the first
rock came in! _And_ the earth from the basket!"

So they were all stricken helpless for five minutes.

They repaired at last to Abanazar's study, and were received reverently.

"What's the matter?" said Stalky, quick to realize new atmospheres.

"You know jolly well," said Abanazar. "You'll be expelled if you get
caught. King is a gibbering maniac."

"Who? Which? What? Expelled for how? We only played the war-drum. We've
got turned out for that already."

"Do you