Page:Hornung - Fathers of Men.djvu/161

 heard was true, but they must have a look for themselves now that they were there. It was one of the two things worth doing at that school, let alone the games, and you had to go in for them, whether you liked them or not.

"What's the other thing?" asked Evan, with a bit of a sneer, as became one who had been longer in the school and apparently learnt less. "Molton Tunnel."

"Yes, I have heard of that. Some fellows are fool enough to walk through it, aren't they?"

"Some who happen to have the pluck," said Chips, taking the answer on himself. "There aren't too many."

"Are you one?" inquired sarcastic Evan.

"No; but he is," returned Chips, with a jerk of the head towards Jan. "I turned tail at the last."

"Don't you believe him," says Jan, grinning. "I wouldn't take him with me; he's too blind, is Chips. Wait till he starts specs; then I'll take you both if you like. There's nothing in it. You can see one end or the other half your time; it's only a short bit where you can't see either, and then you can feel your way. But by gum it makes you mucky!"

"It'd make you muckier if you met a train," Evan suggested, with a sly stress on Jan's epithet. "But I didn't, you see."

"You jolly nearly did," Chips would have it. "The express came through the minute after he did, Devereux."

"Not the minute, nor yet the five minutes," protested Jan. "But here we are at the end of the village, and if that isn't the haunted house I'll eat my cap!"

It stood behind a row of tall iron palings, which stand there still, but the deadly little flat-faced villa was pulled down years ago, and no other habitation occupies its site. The garden was a little wilderness even as the three boys