. Thoughout the
proceedings he had displayed no heat whatever, and when he addressed
Jacker it was with his usual bland irony.

'You should thank me for my pains, my boy, but youth is proverbially
ungrateful. You will think better of my efforts a few years hence;
meanwhile I can afford to wait for the verdict of your riper judgment,
Jacker--I can afford to wait, my boy.'

Jacker's only reply to this was a long wail expressive of a great
disgust. That outburst was too much for the already over-wrought
youngster in the Lower Fifth; starting up with a cry, Ted snatched one of
the leaden ink-wells from its cell in the desk, and took aim at the
master's head. The well struck the wall just above its mark, and
scattered its contents in Joel Ham's pale hair, in his eyes, down his
cheeks, and all over his white moles. Amazement--blind, round-eyed, dumb
amazement--possessed the school, and for a few seconds a dead silence
prevailed. The spell was broken by Dick Haddon, who discovered his
opportunity, plunged like a diver at the weak spot in the wall, went
clean through and disappeared from view. Ted McKnight, who had awakened
to the enormity of his crime at the sight of the master knuckling the ink
out of his eyes, and had gone grey to the lips in his trepidation,
looking anxiously to the right and left for a refuge, saw Dickie's
departure; jumping the desk in front he rushed at the aperture the latter
had left in the wall, and was gone in the twinkling of an eye.

The master mopped the ink from his hair and his face with a sheet of
blotting paper, and calling Belman, Cann, Peterson, Jinks, and Slogan,
made for the door. Already Dick Haddon was halfway across the flat,
scattering the browsing sheep to the right and left in his flight, and
Ted was following at his best pace.

'After them!' cried the master. 'Two whole days' holiday for you if you
run them down.'

The pursuit was taken up cheerfully enough, but it was quite hopeless.
The breakaways were heading for the line of bush, and the sapling scrub
along the creek was so thick that the boys would have been perfectly
secure under its cover, even if the pursuers were not in hearty sympathy
with the pursued, and the pursuit were not a miserable and perfidious
pretence.

Mr. Ham, recognising after a few minutes how matters really stood,
returned to the school. His approach had been signalled by a scout at one
of the windows, and he found the classes all in order and suspic