Held Fast For England | Page 5

could be convinced that it was time to get up. Then each boy put his
bolster in his bed, rolled up his night shirt into a ball and laid it on the
pillow, and then partly covered it up with the clothes. Then they slipped

on their shirts, breeches, and stockings and, taking their jackets and
shoes in their hand, stole out of the door at their end of the room, and
closed it behind them. They then crept downstairs to the room where
their caps were kept, put on these and their jackets, and each boy got a
hockey stick out of the cupboard in the corner in which they were kept.
Then they very cautiously unfastened the shutter, raised the window,
and slipped out. They pulled the shutter to behind them, closed the
window, and then put on their shoes.
"That is managed first rate," Bob said. "There wasn't the least noise. I
made sure Wharton would have dropped his shoes."
"Why should I drop them, more than anyone else?" Wharton asked in
an aggrieved voice.
"I don't know, Billy. The idea occurred to me. I didn't think anyone else
would do it, but I quite made up my mind that you would."
"Well, I wish you wouldn't be so fast about making up your mind,
then," Wharton grumbled. "I ain't more clumsy than other people."
"You are all right," Jim Sankey put in. "Bob's only joking."
"Well, he might as well joke with somebody else, Jim. I don't see any
joke in it."
"No, that is where the joke is, Billy," Bob said. "If you did see the joke,
there wouldn't be any joke in it.
"Well, never mind, here is the walnut tree. Now, who will get over
first?"
The walnut tree stood in the playground near the wall, and had often
proved useful as a ladder to boys at Tulloch's. One of its branches
extended over the wall and, from this, it was easy to drop down beyond
it. The return was more difficult, and was only to be accomplished by
means of an old ivy, which grew against the wall at some distance off.
By its aid the wall could be scaled without much difficulty, and there

was then the choice of dropping twelve feet into the playground, or of
walking on the top of the wall until the walnut tree was reached.
Tulloch's stood some little distance along the Lower Richmond Road.
There were but one or two houses, standing back from the road
between it and the main road up the hill, and there was little fear of
anyone being abroad at that time in the morning. There was, as yet, but
a faint gleam of daylight in the sky; and it was dark in the road up the
hill, as the trees growing in the grounds of the houses, on either side,
stretched far over it.
"I say," Jim Sankey said, "won't it be a go, if Johnny Gibson isn't there,
after all?"
"He will be up there by four," Bob said, confidently. "He said his father
would be going out in his boat to fish, as soon as it began to be
daylight--because the tide served at that hour--and that he would start,
as soon as his father shoved off the boat.
"My eye, Jim, what is that ahead of us? It looks to me like a coach."
"It is a coach, or a carriage, or something of that sort."
"No, it isn't, it is a light cart. What can it be doing here, at this hour?
Let us walk the other side of the road."
They crossed to the left, as they got abreast of the cart. A man, whom
they had not noticed before, said sharply:
"You are about early."
"Yes, we are off to work," Bob replied, and they walked steadily on.
"He couldn't see what we were like," Jim Sankey said, when they had
got a hundred yards further.
"Not he," Bob said. "I could not make out his figure at all, and it is
darker on this side of the road than it is on the other.

"I say, you fellows, I think he is up to no good."
"What do you mean, Bob?"
"Well, what should a cart be standing on the hill for, at this time in the
morning? That's Admiral Langton's, I know; the door is just where the
cart was stopping."
"Well, what has that got to do with it, Bob? The cart won't do him any
harm."
"No, but there may be some fellows with it, who may be breaking into
his house."
"Do you think so, Bob?"
"Well, it seems likely to me it may be his house, or one of the others."
"Well, what are we to do, Bob?"
"I vote