--growl--growl.

So they tried back slowly and sorrowfully, and found the lane, and went
limping down it, plashing in the cold puddly ruts, and beginning to feel
how the run had taken it out of them. The evening closed in fast, and
clouded over, dark, cold, and dreary.

"I say, it must be locking-up, I should think," remarked East, breaking
the silence; "it's so dark."

"What if we're late?" said Tom.

"No tea, and sent up to the Doctor," answered East.

The thought didn't add to their cheerfulness. Presently a faint halloo
was heard from an adjoining field. They answered it and stopped, hoping
for some competent rustic to guide them, when over a gate some twenty
yards ahead crawled the wretched Tadpole, in a state of collapse; he had
lost a shoe in the brook, and been groping after it up to his elbows in
the stiff wet clay, and a more miserable creature in the shape of boy
seldom has been seen.

The sight of him, notwithstanding, cheered them, for he was some degrees
more wretched than they. They also cheered him, as he was now no longer
under the dread of passing his night alone in the fields. And so in
better heart, the three plashed painfully down the never-ending lane. At
last it widened, just as utter darkness set in, and they come out on to
a turnpike-road, and there paused, bewildered, for they had lost all
bearings, and knew not whether to turn to the right or left.

Luckily for them they had not to decide, for lumbering along the road,
with one lamp lighted, and two spavined horses in the shafts, came a
heavy coach, which after a moment's suspense they recognised as the
Oxford coach, the redoubtable Pig and Whistle.

It lumbered slowly up, and the boys mustering their last run, caught it
as it passed, and began scrambling up behind, in which exploit East
missed his footing and fell flat on his nose along the road. Then the
others hailed the old scarecrow of a coachman, who pulled up and agreed
to take them in for a shilling; so there they sat on the back seat,
drubbing with their heels, and their teeth chattering with cold, and
jogged into Rugby some forty minutes after locking-up.

Five minutes afterwards, three small limping shivering figures steal
along through the Doctor's garden, and into the house by the servants'
entrance (all the other gates have been closed long since), where the
first thing they light upon in the passage is old Thomas, ambling along,
candle in one hand and keys in the other