you don't, come on--I ain't done
up!' Then he flung the curtain of cobweb from his eyes, and the situation
flashed upon him in all its grim significance. For a swift moment he
thought of flight, but the master's grip was on his collar.

'Blowed if it ain't Jo,' he murmured in his consternation, and yielded
meekly, like one for whom Fate had proved too strong.

The schoolmaster's white-lashed eyelids blinked rapidly for a second or
so, and he screwed his face into a hard wrinkled grin of gratification.

'Yes, Ginger, my lad,' he said genially, 'Jo, at your service--very much
at your service; and yours, McKnight. We will go inside now, boys. The
sun is painfully hot, and you are fatigued.'

He marched his captives before him into the school room and ranged them
against the wall, under the wide-open wondering eyes of the scholars, by
whom even the most trifling incident of rebellion was always welcomed
with glee as a break in the dull monotony of Joel Ham's peculiar system.
But this was no trifling incident, it was a tremendous outrage and a
delightful mystery; for the boys as they stood there presented to the
amazed classes a strange and amazing spectacle, and were clothed in an
original and, so far as the children were concerned, an inexplicable
disguise. Fighting and tumbling about under the school house, Haddon and
McKnight had gathered much mud, but more cobwebs. In fact, they had wiped
up so many webs that they were covered from head to foot in the clammy
dusty masses. Their hats were lost early in the encounter, and their hair
was full of cobwebs; sticky curtains of cobweb hung about their faces,
and swathed them from top to toe in what looked like a dirty grey fur.
Each boy had cleared his eyes of the thick veil, but so inhuman and
unheard of was their appearance that there was presently a suspicion
amongst the scholars that the master had captured two previously unknown
specimens of the animal kingdom, and consequently further astonishing
developments might be looked for.

CHAPTER II.

Mr. HAM, with wise forethought, carefully locked the door and pocketed
the key after disposing of the lads; and this was well, for Dick Haddon,
fully appreciating the possibilities of the situation, was already
plotting--plotting with every faculty of an active and inventive mind.

The master faced his prisoners, and stood musing over them like a pensive
but kindly cormorant. Mr. Joel Ham, B.A., was a small thin man with a
de