wo chums, Noel and Jack Danvers, had committed
the burglary at Colonel Baker's house the preceding evening as a
practical joke.

It was perhaps one of the most unpremeditated burglaries that had ever
taken place. He and the two young Danvers had spent the previous evening
at the theatre, and as their road home lay in the same direction the two
latter had accompanied Tommy as far as his gate. There Jack had
remembered that Tommy had promised to lend him a book, and the two boys
walked up the short drive with him intending to wait at the door while
Tommy went in to get the book. As they turned the corner of the drive the
light from the open study window streamed out on to the gravel, and they
caught sight of Colonel Baker reclining sound asleep in an armchair. The
hall door was likewise wide open.

"I say," Jack had exclaimed, "your house would be an easy one to burgle,
wouldn't it? Half a dozen burglars could sneak right in under your
father's very nose and go off with anything they fancied."

"Well, let's burgle it!" Tommy exclaimed light-heartedly. "It would be
a ripping good joke. Fancy father's face in the morning." And thereupon
Jack and Noel entering gleefully into the scheme, the three boys had
crept silently into the house, gone as silently under Tommy's guidance
from room to room, snatching up as they went the most valuable things on
which they could lay hands.

It really was all done literally on the spur of the moment, and scarcely
five minutes after the mad idea had entered Tommy's head the three boys
stood in a dark corner of the drive with their booty, consisting of table
silver, some valuable miniatures, and a collection of gold coins,
securely tied up in a gaudy gold-embroidered Indian tablecloth that Tommy
had taken from the drawing-room. The Colonel still slept peacefully.

"Now to hide it," said Tommy, "we'll bury it in a corner of your garden."
Shaking with laughter, and wildly elated at the success of their mad
prank, they very nearly ran, as they were leaving Chesham Lodge, straight
into the arms of a policeman, who, with slow and solemn tread, was pacing
down the road. That narrow shave calmed them somewhat, and probably there
was not one of them who did not feel at that moment that they were actual
burglars. At any rate, their progress from Chesham Lodge was attended
with the utmost caution and with a show of mystery that must infallibly
have aroused deep suspicion had they met any one.

"Wh