for escaping justice, and his dog had been held up to
ridicule to all the world. He did not want to smile; he wanted revenge.

The headmaster, on the other hand, did want to smile. It was not his
dog, he could look on the affair with an unbiased eye, and to him there
was something ludicrous in a white dog suddenly appearing as a red dog.

"It is a scandalous thing!" said Mr. Downing.

"Quite so! Quite so!" said the headmaster hastily. "I shall punish the
boy who did it most severely. I will speak to the school in the Hall
after chapel."

Which he did, but without result. A cordial invitation to the criminal
to come forward and be executed was received in wooden silence by the
school, with the exception of Johnson III, of Outwood's, who, suddenly
reminded of Sammy's appearance by the headmaster's words, broke into a
wild screech of laughter, and was instantly awarded two hundred lines.

The school filed out of the Hall to their various lunches, and Mr.
Downing was left with the conviction that, if he wanted the criminal
discovered, he would have to discover him for himself.

The great thing in affairs of this kind is to get a good start, and
Fate, feeling perhaps that it had been a little hard upon Mr. Downing,
gave him a most magnificent start. Instead of having to hunt for a
needle in a haystack, he found himself in a moment in the position of
being set to find it in a mere truss of straw.

It was Mr. Outwood who helped him. Sergeant Collard had waylaid the
archaeological expert on his way to chapel, and informed him that at
close on twelve the night before he had observed a youth, unidentified,
attempting to get into his house _via_ the water pipe. Mr. Outwood,
whose thoughts were occupied with apses and plinths, not to mention
cromlechs, at the time, thanked the sergeant with absent minded
politeness and passed on. Later he remembered the fact apropos of some
reflections on the subject of burglars in medieval England, and passed
it on to Mr. Downing as they walked back to lunch.

"Then the boy was in your house!" exclaimed Mr. Downing.

"Not actually in, as far as I understand. I gather from the sergeant
that he interrupted him before--"

"I mean he must have been one of the boys in your house."

"But what was he doing out at that hour?"

"He had broken out."

"Impossible, I think. Oh yes, quite impossible! I went around the
dormitories as usual at eleven o'clock last night, and all the boys were
asle