us about locking the
door?"

"That's about it," returned the other, laughing. "What could we do
better?"

Noaks murmured his approval of the scheme, but Gull and Hawley were
silent. To tell the truth, since the big row following their attack on
Browse had put a stop to any further chance of card-parties and other
amusements in Thurston's study, their attachment to the ex-prefect had
considerably lessened. Like many others of their kind, they were
thoroughly selfish at heart, and saw no good in running any personal
risk to settle the quarrels of a third person. The party feeling which
had characterized the last school elections, and caused for the time
being a spirit of ill-will and opposition towards the school leaders,
had just about died a natural death; and if another public meeting had
been called in the gymnasium, not half a dozen fellows would have
shouted for Thurston, or allied themselves against the side of law and
order. All this had tended to make Hawley and Gull lukewarm in their
adherence to the cause. Noaks, however, who would have paid any price
for the privilege of being able to hobnob with those who were in any
higher position than himself, was ready to follow his two Sixth Form
cronies to any extreme they might suggest.

"Well," he inquired, "and what's to be the trick?"

"I only just thought of one on the spur of the moment," answered
Fletcher; "but if no one else has a better to suggest, I daresay it'll
do. We might screw up little Grice's bedroom door so as to get him
down late in the morning; his room's right away at the end of the
passage. There is a screw-driver belonging to Oaks lying in one of the
empty lockers--it has his name on the handle; and if we happened to
drop it as we came away, I think that in the face of this row it would
look uncommonly like his doing. D'you twig?"

There was something so mean and cowardly in this scheme, and in the
manner in which the proposal was made, that even Thurston gave vent to
an exclamation of contempt.

"So that's your little game, is it?" he inquired.

"Yes, that's it; that's my little project for putting a stop to the
Wraxby match. There'll be an awful row, and the doctor'll keep the team
from going. Now, then, who'll do the trick?--Will you, Hawley?"

"No fear," answered Hawley. "Gull and I did most of the last two
blow-ups; it's some one else's turn now. Suppose you do it yourself, as
it's your idea."

Fletcher frowned: in ma