“Stop!  Come back!  Stop, I say!”

But they didn’t stop.  They only ran faster.  Wink beat Ossie to the first window easily and passed out even with Perry.  And as they landed on the stone flagging outside they heard Mr. Drummond excitedly directing the pursuit.

“Quick, Wilkins!  Get them!  They tried to rob the house!” Mr. Drummond’s voice pursued them along the verandah.  “Help!  Robbers!  Head them off!”

The boys took the stone steps in two bounds, crashed at the bottom into a hedge, went tearing through and emerged beyond in a service yard, dimly lighted by one struggling electric bulb over a back doorway.  It was Ossie who fell into the clothes basket and Wink who collided with the clothes reel and sent it spinning wildly and creakingly around in the darkness.  Perry fortunately avoided all pitfalls and was leading by six yards when he reached the top of another flight of steps and saw the marquee and the dancing platform and the gay lights at his right.  To make their way in that direction would be sheer folly, while in front of them lay a tangle of shrubbery and trees.  Into this they hurtled, as from behind them came cries of “Stop, thief!” and the crunching of many footsteps.

Off went Wink’s hat as he fled after the scurrying Perry.  Ossie went down in a tangle of briars and prickly things with a grunt, rolled somehow clear and was off again.  “This way!” shouted a voice.  “I seen ’em!  They went in here!  Come on, men!”

Perry was running alongside a wall now, as he hoped, in the general direction of the street.  Behind him came Wink and Ossie, crashing through shrubbery with a desperate disregard for noise.  Then suddenly, the wall turned abruptly to the right.  Perry stopped short, looked and decided.

“We’ve got to get over!” he gasped, as Wink ran blindly into him.  “Give me a leg-up!”

Wink leaned weakly against the wall and Perry set a foot on his cupped hands and was just able to reach the top of the wall.  But that was enough.  Up he climbed.  Then up came Ossie, and together, while the pursuit drew instantly closer, they pulled Wink to safety.  For a brief moment they sat there and caught their breath while wondering what lay below them in the gloom of the further side.  But there was scant time for conjectures, for the pursuit was in sight.  Three bodies launched themselves into space, there was a frightful, devastating sound of breaking glass and the boys disengaged themselves from a cold-frame and sped on again into the darkness.

A house loomed suddenly before them, a house with lights and folks about the porch and a panting automobile curving its way down a drive.  They turned to the right and kept along a lawn in the shadows of the trees.  The automobile passed them with a purr and a sweeping flare of white light.  Then Perry was after it and in another moment they were all three huddled somehow on the gas-tank at the rear and going with increasing speed out of the grounds and along a road.  For a few minutes they hung there, breathing hard, and then Wink gasped: