"Hullo! how did you get away?"--"What have they been doing?"--"How did
you escape?"

"Oh, such a lark!" cried the boy. "They'll wish they'd never caught me!
I'll tell you all about it after tea."

As soon as the meal was over, Diggory was seized, hurried up into the
schoolroom, and there forced to relate his adventures.

"Well," he began, "they collared me, and dragged me through the gates
and along into their playground. Noaks looked at me and said, 'Hullo,
here's luck! This is the young beggar who tied that rope to the
scrapers; I vote we give him a jolly good licking.' I told them that my
father was a lawyer, and if any of them touched me he'd take a summons
out against them for assault. That frightened Noaks, for you can see
he's a regular coward, so he asked the others what they thought had
better be done with me.

"'I know,' said Hogson. 'There's an old cow-shed in the field next to
ours; let's shut him in and keep him there till after tea. He'll get a
jolly row for being late when he gets back, and he won't dare to say
where he's been; because I know it's against their rules to come
anywhere near us, and Locker's Lane is out of bounds. If he does tell,
we'll swear he was in the road chucking stones at the windows.'

"Some one said there was only a staple on the door of the shed, but
Noaks said he'd fetch the padlock off his play-box, and so he did.

"Well, they took me across their playing field, and over the hedge into
the next, and shut me up in this beastly old hovel. 'It's no use your