t's a trick."

Paul, beginning to smell a rat, examined the notice with closer
attention, and soon detected the erasion where "Fifth" had been
substituted for "Third Form."

"Thanks, Hibbert. I don't know why you should, but you're always doing
me a good turn."

"Not half the good turns you've done me," said the boy earnestly, as he
went out.

"What's in the wind?" Paul asked himself, when he was alone. "Bitter as
Stanley is against me, he can't have set on his cousin to hoax and poke
fun at me. Surely not?"

What was it, then? He could not guess; but it seemed to him that he must
have sunk very low indeed in the eyes of the school when he had become a
target for the junior forms.

"I must put my foot down on that nonsense," he said to himself, as he
paced to and fro the room.

At first he thought of making straight for Baldry and Moncrief minor,
and demanding what it meant; but on second thoughts he decided against
that course, because it would mean mischief to Hibbert. His life at the
school would be made more miserable than it was.

"The best thing after all will be to face it--to accept the invitation
of Masters Moncrief and Baldry to the Forum to-night. I run the risk of
being laughed at, I know, but I'm getting fairly used to that. And it's
just possible I may be able to turn the tables."

Having come to this decision, Paul did the wisest thing possible under
the circumstances--dismissed the matter from his mind, and went on with
his work.

Now it so happened that a meeting of the Fifth had really been called
for that evening in the Forum, and still stranger to relate, for the
express purpose of discussing Paul. The information that he had been
seen in the company of Wyndham, and had actually shaken hands with him,
had quickly spread, and the meeting of the Fifth had been called for the
express purpose of considering this further development in the feud
between the Beetles and the Gargoyles. No notice of this meeting had,
however, been sent to Paul.

So it was that about the time Paul was getting ready to go to the Forum,
little suspecting the proposed meeting, Newall had already started for
it, just as ignorant of the little plot that had been hatched by certain
members of the Third. Leveson had had some lines which had kept him late
in the class-room, and Newall had taken his place in getting the shed
ready for the meeting. Thus it happened he was in advance of the rest.

It was quite dark as New