g got the
chemicals without anyone finding out what he had done.

'You carry the bag to the gate, and I'll take it of you there, and no
one will ever see those bottles again, I can promise you.'

'But how are you going to manage?' asked Leonard.

'Oh, I have made my plans! I have to work in "the stinkery" this
morning, so the thing will be easy enough when I have once got your
bottles up in the "lab.," and they'll go in my pockets for me to take
them up there. Oh, never fear! we shall get rid of that board school
beggar this time, for Skeats is awfully particular about his stuff,
and he'll never forgive him for using chemicals like these away from
"the stinkery." I know where to put them till I want them, so you can
give them to me in a minute, and I will put them into the pockets of
this dust-coat I am carrying; I brought it with me on purpose.'

Leonard breathed a sigh of relief when the bottles were safely
transferred from the bag to the inside pockets of the fashionable
coat.

'If the stopper should come out of that bottle of sulphuric acid, your
coat won't be worth much,' he said, as Taylor swung the coat over his
arm.

'The stoppers are all right, I can see,' he said; but still he carried
the coat carefully, and went at once to hang it up when he got to the
school.

The laboratory had been built at a later date than the main body of
the school, and was reached by a flight of steps from the playground.
The room below it was used for coats and hats and other impedimenta
the boys might bring with them, each boy having his own peg and place
on the shelf for bag or lunch basket. They passed through this room on
their way to the laboratory, and so it would be easy for Taylor to
take down his coat, and carry it up with him when he went for his
practical chemistry lesson, and he did this without any notice being
aroused among the other boys.

At twelve o'clock, when school was over, the science master went to
the playground to look for Howard, who was eating his sandwiches as he
walked up and down. 'You won't be long before you go up to the
laboratory, I suppose, Howard?' he said, when he saw the lad.

'No, sir, I'm going in a minute,' said the boy.

'I have left three boys there finishing their work. Just see they
leave their things all right, when you go in.'

Horace frequently performed such small services for the science
master, and readily promised to do this. But just as Mr. Skeats turned
away, Warren