The Triple Alliance | Page 3

rash determination; but Acton hurried off
into the house, and soon returned with the skates. He sat down on a
bank, and was proceeding to put them on, when he discovered that, by
some oversight, he had brought out the wrong pair. "Bother it! these
aren't mine, they're too short; whose are they?"
"I think they're mine," faltered Mugford.
"Well, put 'em on."
"But I don't want to."
"But I say you must!"
"Oh! please, Acton, I really can't, I--"
"Shut up! Look here, some one's got to go down that slide on skates, so
just put 'em on."
It was at this moment that Diggory Trevanock stepped forward, and
remarked in a casual manner that if Mugford didn't wish to do it, but
would lend him the skates, he himself would go down the slide.
His companions stared at him in astonishment, coupled with which was
a feeling of regret: he was a nice little chap, and they had already begun
to like him, and did not wish to see him dashed to pieces against the
playground wall before their very eyes. Acton, however, had decreed

that "some one had got to go down that slide on skates," and it seemed
only meet and right that if a victim had to be sacrificed it should be a
new boy rather than an old stager.
"Bravo!" cried the dux; "here's one chap at least who's no funk. Put 'em
on sharp; the bell 'll ring in a minute."
Several willing hands were stretched out to assist in arming Diggory
for the enterprise, and in a few moments he was assisted to the top of
the slide.
"All right," he said; "let go!"
The spectators held their breath, hardly daring to watch what would
happen. But fortune favours the brave. The adventurous juvenile rushed
down the path, shot like an arrow through the doorway, and the next
instant was seen ploughing up the snow in the playground, and
eventually disappearing head first into the middle of a big drift.
His companions all rushed down in a body to haul him out of the snow.
Acton smacked him on the back, and called him a trump; while Jack
Vance presented him on the spot with a mince-pie, which had been
slightly damaged in one of the donor's many tumbles, but was, as he
remarked, "just as good as new for eating."
From that moment until the day he left there was never a more popular
boy at The Birches than Diggory Trevanock.
"I say," remarked Mugford, as they met a short time later in the
cloak-room, "that was awfully good of you to go down the slide instead
of me; what ever made you do it?"
"Well," answered the other calmly, "I thought it would save me a lot of
bother if I showed you fellows at once that I wasn't a muff. I don't mind
telling you I was in rather a funk when it came to the start; but I'd said
I'd do it, and of course I couldn't draw back."
The numerous stirring events which happened at The Birches during

the next three terms, and which it will be my pleasing duty to chronicle
in subsequent chapters, gave 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,