"What, sir? Nearly drowned him?"

"I should think so," pursued the master, chuckling with glee. "Jarnley lay there gasping like a newly caught fish. It seems he'd been trying to duck Cetchy, and Cetchy ducked him instead. Nearly drowned him too.

Ha--ha!"

Haviland roared too.

"That chap'll be able to take care of himself, I believe, sir," he said.

"I need hardly have smacked Jarnley's head for bullying him the other day."

"I know you did," said the other dryly, causing Haviland to stop short with a half grin, as he reflected how precious little went on in the school that Sefton didn't know.

"Well, he's got four hundred lines to get through now," went on the latter. "I let Cetchy off with a hundred."

"I expect the other fellows made him go with them, sir," said Haviland.

"And he's hardly been here a week yet."

"If I let him off them, the other fellows'll take it out of him," said Mr Sefton, who understood the drift of this remark.

"They'll do that anyhow, sir. But I've a notion they'll tire of it before long."

So Anthony was called and made to give his version of the incident, which he did in such manner as to convulse both master and prefect--and, to his great delight, the imposition was remitted altogether.

"He's no end of an amusing chap that, sir," said Haviland when the African boy had gone out. "He has all sorts of yarns about Zululand-- can remember about the war too. He's in my dormitory, you know, sir, and he yarns away by the hour--"

The speaker broke off short and somewhat confusedly--as a certain comical twinkle in Mr Sefton's eyes reminded him how guilelessly he was giving himself away: for talking in the dormitories after a certain time, and that rather brief, was strictly forbidden. Mr Sefton, secretly enjoying his confusion, coughed dryly, but made no remark.

After all, _he_ was not Haviland's dormitory master.

"What a big fellow you're getting, Haviland!" he said presently. "I suppose you'll be leaving us soon?"

"I hope not, sir, at least not for another couple of terms. Then I expect I'll have to."

"You're not eager to, then?" eyeing him curiously.

"Not in the least."

"H'm! What are they going to make of you when you do leave?"

The young fellow's face clouded.

"Goodness only knows, sir. I suppose I'll have to go out and split rails in the bush, or something about as inviting, or as paying."

"Well, I don't know that you'll be doing such a bad thing in that, Haviland," rejoined Mr Sefton, "if by 'splitting rails' you mean launching out into some form of colonial life. But whatever it is you've got to throw yourself into it heart and soul, but I should think you'd do that from what I've seen of you here. At any rate, life and its chances are all in front of you instead of half behind you, and you've got to determine not to make a mess of it, as so many fellows do.

Well, I didn't come in here to preach you a sermon, so get along with your lines and start clear again." And the kind-hearted disciplinarian swung himself off the desk and departed, and with him nearly all the rankling bitterness which had been corroding Haviland's mind. The latter scribbled away with a will, and at length threw down his pen with an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of relief.

Even then he could not go out until the lines had been shown up. The next best thing was to look out, and so he climbed up to sit in the open window. The fair English landscape stretched away green and golden in the afternoon sunlight. The shrill screech of swifts wheeling overhead mingled with the twittering of the many sparrows which rendered the creepers clinging to the wall of the school buildings untidy with their nests. Then the clear song of larks soaring above mead and fallow, and farther afield the glad note of the cuckoo from some adjoining copse.

Boys were pa.s.sing by twos and threes, and now and then a master going for his afternoon stroll. Haviland, gazing out from his perch in the window, found himself thinking over Mr Sefton's words. He supposed he should soon be leaving all this, but didn't want to. He liked the school: he liked the masters, except the Head perhaps, who seemed for no reason at all to have a "down" on him. He liked the freedom allowed by the rules outside school hours, and thoroughly appreciated his own post of authority, and the substantial privileges it carried with it. A voice from outside hailed him.

"Hi--Haviland! Done your impos yet?"

"Yes."

"Come with me after call-over. I've got a good thing. Owl's nest.

Must have two to get at it."

The speaker was one Corbould major, a most enthusiastic egg-hunter, and, though not a prefect, a great friend of Haviland's by reason of being a brother sportsman.

"Can't. I'm gated. Won't be able to take the lines up to Nick till to-morrow."

"Why not try him in his study now? He's there, for I saw him go in--and he's in a good humour, for he was grinning and cracking jokes with Laughton and Medlicott. Try him, any way."

"All right," said Haviland, feeling dubious but desperate, as he climbed down from the window.

It required some intrepidity to invade the redoubtable Head in his private quarters, instead of waiting until he appeared officially in public; however, as Corbould had divined, the great Panjandrum happened to be in high good humour, and was graciously pleased to accept the uttermost farthing, and release the prisoner then and there.

Half an hour later two enthusiastic collectors might have been seen, speeding along a narrow lane at a good swinging, staying trot. A quick glance all round, then over a stile and along a dry ditch skirting a long high hedge. Another quick look round, and both were in a small hazel copse. On the further side of this, in a field just outside it, stood a barn. This was their objective.

Now, before leaving cover, they reconnoitred carefully and exhaustively.

The farmhouse to which the barn belonged stood but two fields off, and they could distinctly hear the cackling of the fowls around it--and in another direction they could see men working in the fields at no great distance. Needless to say, the pair were engaged in an act of flagrant trespa.s.s.

"That's all right so far," whispered Corbould major, as they stood within the gloom of the interior, feebly illuminated by streaks of light through the c.h.i.n.ks. "There's the nest, up there, in that corner, and you'll have to give me a hoist up to the beam from the other end. We can't take it from this because there's a hen squatting on a lot of eggs right underneath, and she'll kick up such a beastly row if we disturb her."

A warning "cluck-cluck" proceeding from the fowl in question had already caused Haviland something of a start. However, they were careful not to alarm her, and she sat on. Meanwhile, Corbould had reached the beam, and with some difficulty had drawn himself up and was now creeping along it.

Haviland's heart was pulsating with excitement as he stood there in the semi-gloom, watching his companion's progress, for the adventure was a bold one, and the penalty of detection condign. Now a weird hissing arose from the dark corner overhead, as Corbould, worming his way along the beam, drew nearer and nearer to it, and then, and then, to him above and to him below, it seemed that there came a hissing as of a thousand serpents, a whirlwind of flapping wings, a gasp, a heavy fall, a crash, and he who had been aloft on yonder beam now lay sprawling beneath it, while the hen, which had saved itself as though by a miracle, was dashing round and round the barn, uttering raucous shrieks of terror.

"You a.s.s! You've done it now!" exclaimed Haviland, horror-stricken, as he surveyed his chum, who, half-stupefied, was picking himself up gingerly. And he had. For what he had "done" was to lose his hold and tumble right slap on top of the sitting hen, or rather where that nimble fowl had been a moment before, namely on the nest of eggs; and these being in a state of semi-incubation, it followed that the whole back of his jacket and trousers was in the most nauseous mess imaginable.

This was too much for Haviland, and, the peril of the situation notwithstanding, he laughed himself into a condition that was abjectly helpless.

"Shut up, Haviland, and don't be an a.s.s, for heaven's sake! We must get out of this!" cried Corbould. "Scrag that beastly fowl. It's giving away the whole show!" And indeed such was likely to be the result, for what with the owl hissing like a fury overhead, and the hen yelling below, it seemed that the din should be heard for miles.

A hedge stake, deftly shied, silenced the latter, and this first act of stern self-preservation accomplished, the second followed, viz.: to slip cautiously forth, and make themselves remarkably scarce. This they succeeded in doing. Luck favoured them, miraculously as it seemed, and, having put a respectable distance between themselves and the scene of the adventure, they made for a safe hiding-place where they could decide on the next move, for it was manifestly impossible for Corbould to show up in that state.

Snugly ensconced in a dry ditch, well overhung with brambles, they soon regained wind after their exertions and excitement. But Haviland, lying on the ground, laughed till he cried.

"If you could only have seen yourself, Corbould," he stuttered between each paroxysm, "rising like Phoenix from the ashes! And that infernal fowl waltzing round and round the barn squawking like mad, and the jolly owl flapping and hissing up top there! O Lord, you'd have died!"

"We didn't get the eggs, though. Wouldn't have minded if we'd got the eggs."

"Well, we won't get them now, for I don't suppose either of us'll be such a.s.ses as to go near the place again this season after the to-do there'll be when old Siggles discovers the smash up. It's a pity to have done all that damage though, gets us a rottener name than ever."

"It couldn't. These beasts of farmers, it doesn't hurt them if we hunt for nests. Yet they're worse than the keepers. _They_ have some excuse, the brutes."

"How on earth were you such an a.s.s as to come that cropper, Corbould?"

said the other, going off into a paroxysm again.

"Oh, it's all jolly fine, but what'd you have done with that beastly owl flapping around your ears and trying to peck your eyes out? But I say.

What are we going to do about this?" showing the horrible mess his clothes were in.