`Here's Macrea's house,' said Stalky, his eye at the crack of the third cupboard. `I can see Barnes's name on his trunk. Don't make such a row, Beetle! We can get right to the end of the Coll. Come on! . . . We're in King's house now--I can see a bit of Rattray's trunk. How these beastly boards hurt one's knees!' They heard his nails scraping on plaster.

`That's the ceiling below. Look out! If we smashed that the plaster 'ud fall down in the lower dormitory,' said Beetle.

`Let's,' whispered M`Turk.

`An' be collared first thing? Not much. Why, I can shove my hand ever so far up between these boards.'

Stalky thrust an arm to the elbow between the joists.

`No good stayin' here. I vote we go back and talk it over. It's a crummy place. 'Must say I'm grateful to King for his waterworks.'

They crawled out, brushed one another clean, slid the saloon-pistols down a trouser-leg, and hurried forth to a deep and solitary Devonshire lane in whose flanks a boy might sometimes slay a young rabbit. They threw themselves down under the rank elder bushes, and began to think aloud.

`You know,' said Stalky at last, sighting at a distant sparrow, `we could hide our sallies in there like anything.'

`Huh!' Beetle snorted, choked, and gurgled. He had been silent since they left the dormitory.

`Did you ever read a book called The History of a House or something? I got it out of the library the other day. A Frenchwoman wrote it--Violet somebody. But it's translated, you know; and it's very interestin'. Tells you how a house is built.'

`Well, if you're in a sweat to find out that, you can go down to the new cottages they're building for the coastguard.'

`My Hat! I will.' He felt in his pockets. `Give me tuppence, some one.'

`Rot! Stay here, and don't mess about in the sun.'

`Gi' me tuppence.'

`I say, Beetle, you aren't stuffy about anything, are you?' said M`Turk, handing over the coppers. His tone was serious, for though Stalky often, and M`Turk occasionally, manoeuvred on his own account, Beetle had never been known to do so in all the history of the confederacy.

`No, I'm not. I'm thinking.'

`Well, we'll come, too,' said Stalky, with a general's suspicion of his aides.

`'Don't want you.'

`Oh, leave him alone. He's been taken worse with a poem,' said M`Turk. `He'll go burbling down to the Pebbleridge and spit it all up in the study when he comes back.'

Then why did he want the tuppence, Turkey? He's gettin' too beastly independent. Hi! There's a bunny. No, it ain't. It's a cat, by Jove! You plug first.'

Twenty minutes later a boy with a straw hat at the back of his head, and his hands in his pockets, was staring at workmen as they moved about a half-finished cottage. He produced some ferocious tobacco, and was passed from the forecourt into the interior, where he asked many questions.