he boys' hall.

"Through these windows?" I whispered, when the clock over the piano had
had matters its own way long enough to make our minds quite easy.

"How else?" whispered Raffles, as he opened the one on whose ledge our
letters used to await us of a morning.

"And then through the quad--"

"And over the gates at the end. No talking, Bunny; there's a dormitory
just overhead; but ours was in front, you remember, and if they had
ever seen me I should have nipped back this way while they were
watching the other."

His finger was on his lips as we got out softly into the starlight. I
remember how the gravel hurt as we left the smooth flagged margin of
the house for the open quad; but the nearer of two long green seats
(whereon you prepared your construe for the second-school in the summer
term) was mercifully handy; and once in our rubber soles we had no
difficulty in scaling the gates beyond the fives-courts. Moreover, we
dropped into a very desert of a country road, nor saw a soul when we
doubled back beneath the outer study windows, nor heard a footfall in
the main street of the slumbering town. Our own fell like the
night-dews and the petals of the poet; but Raffles ran his arm through
mine, and would chatter in whispers as we went.

"So you and Nipper had a word--or was it words? I saw you out of the
tail of my eye when I was dancing, and I heard you out of the tail of
my ear. It sounded like words, Bunny, and I thought I caught my name.
He's the most consistent man I know, and the least altered from a boy.
But he'll subscribe all right, you'll see, and be very glad I made him."

I whispered back that I did not believe it for a moment. Raffles had
not heard all Nasmyth had said of him. And neither would he listen to
the little I meant to repeat to him; he would but reiterate a
conviction so chimerical to my mind that I interrupted in my turn to
ask him what ground he had for it.

"I've told you already," said Raffles. "I mean to make him."

"But how?" I asked. "And when, and where?"

"At Philippi, Bunny, where I said I'd see him. What a rabbit you are
at a quotation!

"'And I think that the field of Philippi
Was where Caesar came to an end;
But who gave old Brutus the tip, I
Can't comprehend!'

"You may have forgotten your Shakespeare, Bunny, but you ought to
remember that."

And I did, vaguely, but had no idea what it or Raffles meant, as I
plainly told him.

"