the boys plenty of opportunity of testing the
character of their new companion, or, in plainer English, of finding out
the stuff he was made of; and whatever his other faults may have been,
this at least is certain, that no one ever found occasion to charge
Diggory Trevanock with being either a muff or a coward.

One might have thought that the slide episode would have afforded
excitement enough for a new boy's first day at school; yet before it
closed he was destined to be mixed up in an adventure of a still
more thrilling character.

The Birches was an old house, and though its outward appearance was
modern enough, the interior impressed even youthful minds with a feeling
of reverence for its age. The heavy timbers, the queer shape of some of
the bedrooms and attics, the narrow, crooked passages, and the little
unexpected flights of stairs, were all things belonging to a bygone age,
of which the pupils were secretly proud, and which caused them to
remember the place, and think of it at the time, as being in some way
different from an ordinary school.

"I say, Diggy," exclaimed Jack Vance, addressing the new boy by the
friendly abbreviation, which seemed by mutual consent to have been
bestowed upon him in recognition of his daring exploit--"I say, Diggy,
you're in my bedroom: there's you, and me, and Mugford. Mug's an awful
chump, but he's a good-natured old duffer, and you and I'll do the
fighting."

"What do you mean?"

"Why, sometimes when Blake is out spending the evening, and old Welsby
is shut up in his library, the different rooms make raids on one
another. It began the term before last. Blake had been teaching us all
about how the Crusaders used to go out every now and then and make war
in Palestine, and so the fellows on the west side of the house called
themselves the Crusaders, and we were Infidels, and they'd come over and
rag us, and we should drive them back. Miss Eleanor came up one night,
and caught us in the middle of a battle. O Diggy, she is a trump!
Blake asked her next day before us all which boys had been out on the
landing, because he meant to punish them; and she laughed, and said:
'I'm sure I can't tell you. Why, when I saw they were all in their
night-shirts, I shut my eyes at once!' Of course it was all an excuse
for not giving us away. She doesn't mind seeing chaps in their
night-shirts when they're ill, we all know that; and once or twice
when for some reason or other she tol