ould
gnash his teeth with _envy_ and wish woe to the hour when he was fool
enough to desert his noblest friend!

"Tell you what'll be a lark, Coote," said Heathcote, as the two strode
on, arm in arm, followed by a small crowd of juniors, who, seeing they
were "on the swagger," hoped to be in the sport as spectators. "Tell
you what; we'll have a walk round the roofs. I know where we can get
up. We can get nearly all round the Quad. Won't it be a spree?"

Coote looked as delighted as he could, and said he hoped they wouldn't
be caught, or there might be a row.

"Bless you, no one's about to-day. Come on. Nobody's done it since
Fitch fell off a year ago, and he only got half round."

Coote was inwardly most reluctant to deprive the late Master Fitch of
his hard-earned laurels, and even hinted as much. But Heathcote was in
no humour for paltering. He was playing a high game, and Coote must
play, too.

So they gave their followers the slip, and dodged their way back to the
Quad, and made for the first staircase next to the Great Gate. Up here
they crept, hurriedly and stealthily. One or two boys met them on the
way, but Georgie swaggered past them, as though bound to pay an ordinary
morning call on some occupant of the top floor. The top floor of all
was dedicated to the use of the maids, who at that hour of the day were
too much occupied elsewhere in making beds and filling jugs, to be at
all inconvenient.

Heathcote, who, considering he had never made the expedition before, was
wonderfully well up in the geography of the place, piloted Coote up a
sort of ladder which ended in a trap-door in the ceiling of the garret.

"I know it's up here," he said. "Raggles told me it was the way Fitch
got up."

"Oh!" said Coote, hanging tight on to the ladder with both arms, and
trusting that, whichever way they ascended, they might select a
different mode of descent from that adopted by the unfortunate Fitch.

Horrors! The trap-door was padlocked!

Joy! The padlock was not locked!

They opened the flap, and scrambled into a cavernous space between the
ceiling and the roof, from which, to Coote's relief, there seemed no
exit, except by the door at which they entered.

Heathcote, however, was not to be put off, and scrambled round the place
on his hands and knees, in search of the hole in the roof, which he
knew, on Raggles' authority, was there.

It was there, at the very end of the gable: a little manhole,