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 in peculiarly atrocious shades, splashed the boys with vivid colour as they stood abreast; but no light came from the upper rooms, all the doors being shut. Jan opened one of them, but soon left his followers behind in another room sweetened by a shattered pane. Their differences forgotten in the excitement of the adventure, these two were chatting confidentially enough when a dreadful cry brought them headlong to the door.

It was Jan's voice again; they could see nothing of him, but a large mouse came scuttling through an open door at the end of the landing, and almost over their toes. Carpenter skipped to one side, but Devereux dashed his cap at the little creature with a shout of nervous mirth.

"Don't laugh, you chaps!" said Jan, lurching into the doorway at the landing's end. They could not see his face; the strongest light was in the room behind him, but they saw him swaying upon its threshold.

"I can't help it," said Evan, hysterically. "Frightened by a mouse—you of all people!"

Jan turned back into the room without a word, but they saw his fist close upon the handle of the door, and he seemed to be leaning on it for support as the other two came up. "Oh, I say, we must smash a window here!" Evan had cried, with the same strained merriment, when Chips, bringing up the rear, saw the other spring from Jan's side back into the passage. Chips pushed past him, and hugged Jan's arm.

It was not another empty room; there was a tall fixed cupboard between fireplace and window, its door standing as wide open as the one where the two boys clung together; and in the cupboard hung a suit of bursting corduroys, with a blackened face looking out of it, and hobnail boots just clear of the floor.