nored 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 recognised
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 carriage drive
ran in a semicircle, of which the house was the centre. 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 towards 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 recognised 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 exercise. When he moved now it
was at a stately walk. The fact that he ran to-night showed how the
excitement of the chase had entered into his blood.

"Oo-oo-oo yer!" he shouted again, as Mike, passing through the gate,
turned into the road that led to the school. Mike's attentive ear
noted that the bright speech was a shade more puffily delivered this
time. He began to feel that this was not such bad fun after all. He
would have liked to be in bed, but, if that was out of the question,
this was certainly the next best thing.

He ran on, taking things easily, with the sergeant panting in his
wake, till he reached the entrance to the school grounds. He dashed in
and took cover behind a tree.

Presently the sergeant tur