"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