So they tried back slowly and sorrowfully, and found the lane, and went limping down it, plashing in the cold puddly ruts, and beginning to feel how the run had taken it out of them.  The evening closed in fast, and clouded over, dark, cold, and dreary.

“I say, it must be locking-up, I should think,” remarked East, breaking the silence—­“it’s so dark.”

“What if we’re late?” said Tom.

“No tea, and sent up to the Doctor,” answered East.

The thought didn’t add to their cheerfulness.  Presently a faint halloo was heard from an adjoining field.  They answered it and stopped, hoping for some competent rustic to guide them, when over a gate some twenty yards ahead crawled the wretched Tadpole, in a state of collapse.  He had lost a shoe in the brook, and had been groping after it up to his elbows in the stiff, wet clay, and a more miserable creature in the shape of boy seldom has been seen.

The sight of him, notwithstanding, cheered them, for he was some degrees more wretched than they.  They also cheered him, as he was no longer under the dread of passing his night alone in the fields.  And so, in better heart, the three plashed painfully down the never-ending lane.  At last it widened, just as utter darkness set in, and they came out on a turnpike road, and there paused, bewildered, for they had lost all bearings, and knew not whether to turn to the right or left.

Luckily for them they had not to decide, for lumbering along the road, with one lamp lighted and two spavined horses in the shafts, came a heavy coach, which after a moment’s suspense they recognized as the Oxford coach, the redoubtable Pig and Whistle.

It lumbered slowly up, and the boys, mustering their last run, caught it as it passed, and began clambering up behind, in which exploit East missed his footing and fell flat on his nose along the road.  Then the others hailed the old scarecrow of a coachman, who pulled up and agreed to take them in for a shilling; so there they sat on the back seat, drubbing with their heels, and their teeth chattering with cold, and jogged into Rugby some forty minutes after locking-up.

Five minutes afterwards three small, limping, shivering figures steal along through the Doctor’s garden, and into the house by the servants’ entrance (all the other gates have been closed long since), where the first thing they light upon in the passage is old Thomas, ambling along, candle in one hand and keys in the other.

He stops and examines their condition with a grim smile.  “Ah!  East, Hall, and Brown, late for locking-up.  Must go up to the Doctor’s study at once.”

“Well but, Thomas, mayn’t we go and wash first?  You can put down the time, you know.”

“Doctor’s study d’rectly you come in—­that’s the orders,” replied old Thomas, motioning towards the stairs at the end of the passage which led up into the Doctor’s house; and the boys turned ruefully down it, not cheered by the old verger’s muttered remark, “What a pickle they boys be in!” Thomas referred to their faces and habiliments, but they construed it as indicating the Doctor’s state of mind.  Upon the short flight of stairs they paused to hold counsel.