`This is piffling,' said M`Turk. `Let's get our sallies, and go and shoot bunnies.'

Three saloon-pistols, with a supply of bulleted breech-caps, were stored in Stalky's trunk, and this trunk was in their dormitory, and their dormitory was a three-bed attic one, opening out of a ten-bed establishment, which, in turn, communicated with the great range of dormitories that ran practically from one end of the College to the other. Macrea's house lay next to Prout's, King's next to Macrea's, and Hartopp's beyond that again. Carefully locked doors divided house from house, but each house, in its internal arrangements--the College had originally been a terrace of twelve large houses--was a replica of the next; one straight roof covering all.

They found Stalky's bed drawn out from the wall to the left of the dormer window, and the latter end of Richards protruding from a two-foot-square cupboard in the wall.

`What's all this? I've never noticed it before. What are you tryin' to do, Fatty?'

`Fillin' basins, Muster Corkran.' Richards's voice was hollow and muffled. `They've been savin' me trouble. Yiss.'

`'Looks like it,' said M`Turk. `Hi! You'll stick if you don't take care.'

Richards backed puffing.

`I can't rache un. Yiss, 'tess a turncock, Muster M`Turk. They've took an' runned all the watter-pipes a storey higher in the houses--runned 'em all along under the 'ang of the heaves, like. Runned 'em in last holidays. I can't rache the turncock.'

`Let me try,' said Stalky, diving into the aperture.

`Slip 'ee to the left, then, Muster Corkran. Slip 'ee to the left, an' feel in the dark.'

To the left Stalky wriggled, and saw a long line of lead-pipe disappearing up a triangular tunnel, whose roof was the rafters and boarding of the College roof, whose floor was sharp-edged joists, and whose side was the rough studding of the lath and plaster wall under the dormer.

`Rummy show. How far does it go?'

`Right along, Muster Corkran--right along from end to end. Her runs under the 'ang of the heaves. Have 'ee rached the stopcock yet? Mr. King got un put in to save us carryin' watter from downstairs to fill the basins. No place for a lusty man like old Richards. I'm tu thickabout to go ferritin'. Thank 'ee, Muster Corkran.'

The water squirted through the tap just inside the cupboard, and, having filled the basins, the grateful Richards waddled away.

The boys sat round-eyed on their beds considering the possibilities of this trove. Two floors below them they could hear the hum of the angry house; for nothing is so still as a dormitory in mid-afternoon of a midsummer term.

`It has been papered over till now.' M`Turk examined the little door. `If we'd only known before!'

`I vote we go down and explore. No one will come up this time o' day. We needn't keep cavé.'

They crawled in, Stalky leading, drew the door behind them, and on all fours embarked on a dark and dirty road full of plaster, odd shavings, and all the raffle that builders leave in the waste-room of a house. The passage was perhaps three feet wide, and, except for the straggling light round the edges of the cupboards (there was one to each dormer), almost pitchy dark.