‘We’ll go into one o’ the old rooms, an’ fix the joey up there.  Then we can wait till Hamlet comes, if yonse fellows ‘re game,’ said Dick softly.

‘I’m on,’ whispered Peterson.

’He won’t be long, I bet.  McKnight, ’r Belman, ‘r some o’ the others is sure to roust him out when he’s properly tight.  Foller me.’

Dick led the way up to the door, pushed it open, and entered.  The others were about to follow, but to their horror they saw a large figure start forward from the pitch darkness beyond, heard an oath and the sound of a blow, and saw Dick fall face downwards upon the floor.  Then the door was slammed from within, and the three terrorstricken boys turned and fled as fast as their legs would carry them.

Dick lay upon the floor with outthrown arms, and the figure stood over him in a listening attitude.

’Good God! ‘ye you killed him?’ cried someone in the far corner of the room.

‘Sh-h, you cursed fool!’ hissed the big man.

‘Who is it?’ asked the other tremulously.

The big man seized Dick, and dragged him to where the grey moonlight shone through a shattered window.

‘Young Haddon,’ he said.  ’Blast the boy! a man never knows where he will poke his nose next.’

’The others ‘ye gone?’

‘Yes.  They were on’y boys.’

‘Didn’t I tell you it wouldn’t do to be meetin’ in places like this?  No more of it for me.  They’ve been listenin’, an’ we’re done men.  We’ll be nabbed!’

’Shut up your infernal cackle!  The boys hadn’t any notion we was here.  They had some lark on.  They couldn’t have seen us—­we’re all right.’

‘If they saw us together it’d be enough.’

‘But they couldn’t, I tell you.  Here, clear out, the boy’s comin’ round.  Go the front way, an’ make for the paddocks.  I’ll go up the gully.  Look slippy!’

A few seconds after the men had left the house Dick scrambled to his feet, and stood for a moment in a confused condition of mind, rubbing his injured head.  Then he took up his hat and lantern, and stumbled from the room.  As yet he had only a vague idea of what had happened, and his head felt very large and full of fly-wheels, as he expressed it later; but a few moments in the open air served to revive him.  Along by the big quarry he met his mates returning.  After talking the matter over they had come to the conclusion that the schoolmaster had got a hint of their intention, and had lain in wait.  They gathered about Dick, whose forehead was most picturesquely bedabbled with blood.

‘Crikey!  Dick,’ cried the wondering Jacker, ‘did he hammer you much?’

‘Feel,’ said Dick, guiding one hand after another to a lump on his head that increased his height by quite an inch.

‘Great Gosh!’ murmured Peterson; ’ain’t he a one-er?  The beggar must ‘a’ tried to murder you.’

Dick nodded.

‘Yes,’ he said; ’but ‘twasn’t Hamlet.’