just big
enough to let a small body through to clear the gutter, and no more.

"Hurrah, old man!" shouted Heathcote, in a whisper, to his follower, who
still lingered at the trap-door. "I've got it. Shut that door down,
and crawl over here. Mind you keep on the rafters, or you'll drop
through."

"Hurrah!" said Coote, pensively, as he proceeded to obey.

In two minutes they were out upon the roof, and enjoying a wonderful
bird's-eye view of Templeton and the coast beyond.

A moderately broad gutter ran round the roof on the inside of the
Quadrangle, with a low stone parapet at the edge. Along this the two
boys crawled slowly and cautiously, until they had reached about the
middle of their side of the Quadrangle.

It was dizzy work, looking down from their eminence; but glorious. Even
Coote, now the venture had been made, and no relics of the late Master
Fitch had appeared, began to enjoy himself.

"What a pity Dick isn't here!" said he.

"Rather! Won't he look blue when he hears of it?" said Heathcote.
"Hullo! there are some of the fellows in the Quad. There's Pauncefote,
isn't it? I vote we yell."

"Perhaps somebody would hear. Hadn't we better chuck a stone."

Heathcote detached a piece of plaster from the gutter, and pitched it
neatly down within an inch of the head of the unsuspecting Pauncefote.
That hero started, and looked first at the stone, then at the sky.
Finally his eyes met Georgie's triumphant face beaming over the parapet,
side by side with the rosy countenance of Coote.

It was enough. In another two minutes the Den knew what was going on,
and Georgie and Coote were the heroes of the hour.

Moved by a desire to afford their spectators an entertainment worthy of
their applause, they proceeded to make the round of the Quadrangle at a
smart, though not always steady, pace; for their attention was so much
divided between the gutter before them and the upturned faces below
them, that they were once or twice decidedly close on the heels of the
luckless Fitch.

Once, when they came to a comparatively broad landing, they varied the
entertainment by swarming a little way up the tiles and sliding
gracefully down again, regardless of tailors' bills; and when the
spectators got tired of that, they treated them to a little horse-play
by pelting them with bits of plaster, and finally with Coote's hat.

Even the highest class of entertainment cannot thrill for ever, and
after a quarter of an ho