return apparently lost property.

Then there had been the matter of the flagging of a fast Northern train
in the middle of the fens with a red pocket-handkerchief, to find out if
it were really true that the train would stop, followed by a rapid
retreat on bicycles so soon as it had been ascertained that it was true;
the Affair of the German Prince traveling incognito, into which the
Mayor himself had been drawn; and the Affair of the Nun who smoked a
short black pipe in the Great Court shortly before midnight, before
gathering up her skirts and vanishing on noiseless india-rubber-shod
feet round the kitchen quarters into the gloom of Neville's Court, as
the horrified porter descended from his signal-box.

Now many minds could have conceived these things; a smaller number of
people would have announced their intention of doing them: but there
were very few persons who would actually carry them all out to the very
end: in fact, Jack reflected, Frank Guiseley was about the only man of
his acquaintance who could possibly have done them. And he had done
them all on his own sole responsibility.

He had remembered, too, during the past week, certain incidents of the
same nature at Eton. There was the master who had rashly inquired, with
deep sarcasm, on the fourth or fifth occasion in one week when Frank had
come in a little late for five-o'clock school, whether "Guiseley would
not like to have tea before pursuing his studies." Frank, with a radiant
smile of gratitude, and extraordinary rapidity, had answered that he
would like it very much indeed, and had vanished through the still
half-open door before another word could be uttered, returning with a
look of childlike innocence at about five-and-twenty minutes to six.

"Please, sir," he had said, "I thought you said I might go?"

"And have you had tea?"

"Why, certainly, sir; at Webber's."

Now all this kind of thing was a little disconcerting to remember now.
Truly, the things in themselves had been admirably conceived and
faithfully executed, but they seemed to show that Frank was the kind of
person who really carried through what other people only talked
about--and especially if he announced beforehand that he intended to do
it.

It was a little dismaying, therefore, for his friend to reflect that
upon the arrival of the famous letter from Lord Talgarth--Frank's
father--six days previously, in which all the well-worn phrases occurred
as to "darkening doors" and