nk '81 port, and
remember their sorrows no more?

Mr. Wontner looked at them severely, Ipps within easy reach, his hands
quite ready. 'Childish,' said Mr. Wontner at last. 'Childish but
necessary. Er--have you such a thing as a rope on the premises, and a
sack--two sacks and two ropes? I'm afraid I can't resist the temptation.
That man understands, doesn't he, that this is a private matter?'

'That man,' who was me, was off to the basement like one of Infant's own
fallow-deer. The stables gave me what I wanted, and coming back with it
through a dark passage, I ran squarely into Ipps. 'Go on!' he grunted.
'The minute he lays hands on Master Bobby, Master Bobby's saved. But
that person ought to be told how near he came to being assaulted. It was
touch-and-go with me all the time from the soup down, I assure you.'

I arrived breathless with the sacks and the ropes. 'They were two to one
with me,' said Mr. Wontner, as he took them. 'If they wake--'

'We'll stand by,' Stalky replied. 'Two to one is quite fair.'

But the boys hardly grunted as Mr. Wontner roped first one and then the
other. Even when they were slid into the sacks they only mumbled, with
rolling heads, through sticky lips, and snored on.

'Port?' said Mr. Wontner virtuously.

'Nervous exhaustion. They aren't much more than kids, after all. What's
next?' said Stalky.

'I want to take 'em away with me, please.'

Stalky looked at him with respect.

'I'll have my car round in five minutes,' said The Infant. 'Ipps'll help
carry 'em downstairs,' and he shook Mr. Wontner by the hand.

We were all perfectly serious till the two bundles were dumped on a
divan in the hall, and the boys waked and began to realise what
had happened.

'Yah!' said Mr. Wontner, with the simplicity of twelve years old. 'Who's
scored now?' And he sat upon them. The tension broke in a storm of
laughter, led, I think, by Ipps.

'Asinine--absolutely asinine!' said Mr. Wontner, with folded arms from
his lively chair. But he drank in the flattery and the fellowship of it
all with quite a brainless grin, as we rolled and stamped round him, and
wiped the tears from our cheeks.

'Hang it!' said Bobby Trivett. 'We're defeated!'

'By tactics, too,' said Eames. 'I didn't think you knew 'em, Clausewitz.
It's a fair score. What are you going to do with us?'

'Take you back to Mess,' said Mr. Wontner.

'Not like this?'

'Oh no. Worse--much worse! I haven't begun with you yet. And you