get them from one or
the other, and that's certain.'

'Bosh! there's another two days yet before we must have the books back,
and, at any rate, I know where Billy has put them.'

'What's the good of that? We are not allowed in the school buildings
except in work-hours, and then, if his study is not locked, it's because
Billy himself is inside it. If you could get him out without locking the
door, in the lunch-hour, there would be some use in all your ideas.'

'If I could make him put his head out of the window, that would do quite
as well,' said Baker, meditatively. 'The books are on the cupboard just
inside the door.'

Paynton laughed. 'It would take an awful uproar in the quad to wake
Billy, and if we are creating an uproar, how are we to fetch the books
out? It is all your fault. Whatever made you say Billy's window was the
window of our class-room?'

'Well, I thought it was.'

'You shouldn't think, you should be sure. If only we'd thrown in
anything but the algebra books it would have been all right; but Pottles
promised to teach us a lesson next time we came to class without them,
and you know what that means.'

'Shut up, Paynton--I've got an idea.'

'I hope it's a better one than throwing books in at wrong windows,' said
his friend, and the two boys went along together still arguing busily.

Baker and Paynton were the despair of Mr. Potter, the master of the
Lower Fourth, rudely called Pottles behind his back; and even Mr.
Wilson, the somewhat absent-minded Head Master, nicknamed Billy by his
irreverent scholars, was beginning to wonder whether it would not be
better to suggest to the parents to try whether sending them to a fresh
school would have any effect on them. It was useless to cane them, it
was useless to give them 'lines.' They took their punishment as the
natural part of a day's work that was otherwise devoted to 'scoring off'
the masters and avoiding the pursuit of knowledge. On this occasion Mr.
Wilson had by no means forgotten that he had ordered the two boys to
come to his study to claim the books that they had thrown in there by
mistake, but he was rather glad that they did not arrive at once, as he
wanted to think of some fresh means of impressing them.

* * * * *

The following morning when the upper school began its lunch interval,
the lower was being drilled in the 'quad,' round three sides of which
ran the school buildings. On the fourth was an iron