ancing on to where the Dux,
cool as a cucumber, sat turning over the leaves of his lexicon.

"He's got a cheek of his own, has Dux," said I to myself.

"If I didn't know it was him," signalled the ungrammatical Dicky across
the room, "I should never have believed it."

"You may make as many faces as you like at young Brown," glared Tempest
at me, "but if I catch you making any more at me, your mother will need
some extra pocket-handkerchiefs."

"Jones," observed Dr Plummer aloud, "a double _poena_ for aggravated
inattention."

All right. I was getting pretty full up with engagements for one day,
and began to think bed-time would be rather a relief.

It came at last. In the dormitory Ramsbottom successfully interfered
with conversation by patrolling the chamber until the boys were asleep.
No one doubted that he had been set to the task by the head master, and
it augured rather badly for the resumption of the inquest next day.

However, even patrols go to sleep sometimes, and when I woke early next
morning the usher had vanished to his own chamber. My first thought was
not Hector, or the doctor, or my _poenas_, or the Dux, but the pond.

How, I wondered, was it getting on?

I routed up Dicky, and very quietly we dressed and slipped out. I knew
that my early rising, if it were discovered, would probably be set down
to my zeal for discharging impositions. But even they must wait now
till we were sure about the pond.

For Dicky and I stood liable to as big a row as the assassin of Hector
himself if anything went wrong with our experiment in engineering.
Luckily very few fellows haunted this particularly muddy corner of the
grounds, and now that Hector was above a daily bath, there was little
chance of Plummer himself discovering the remarkably low tide on his
premises--still less of his poking about among the stones in the bed of
the pool.

To our great relief we found that our dam at the foot was holding out
bravely, and that comparatively little water was trickling through the
bank into the shrubbery. The flow at the upper end, however, was
distressingly small, and though a whole night had passed we could still
see the heap of stones under which the pistol was buried rising up from
the shallow puddles around it, inviting investigation.

With astounding industry we worked away that morning, widening and
deepening the little channel along which the rivulet made its way to the
pond. And before we had done