said, "Mr. Ellesby, may I trouble you to step here for a moment?"
None of the trio raised their eyes from their work. There was a
muttered conversation in the passage, and then the door was once more
closed.

The master returned to his desk, dipped his pen in the ink, and
addressing some one at the back of the room, inquired,--

"What did Dr. Denson say your name was?"

"Noaks, sir."

The Triple Alliance gave a simultaneous start as though they had
received an electric shock, and their heads turned round like three
weathercocks.

There, sure enough, at the back desk of all, sat the late leader of the
Philistines, with a rather sheepish expression on his face, somewhat
similar to the one it had worn when the marauders from Horace House had
been ushered into Mr. Welsby's study.

Jack Vance looked at Mugford, and Mugford looked at Diggory. "Well, I'm
jiggered!" whispered the latter, and once more returned to his
examination paper.

At eleven o'clock there was a quarter of an hour's interval. Being
still, as it were, strangers in a strange land, the three friends kept
pretty close together. They were walking arm in arm about the
quadrangle, giving expression to their astonishment at this latest
arrival at Ronleigh, when Diggory suddenly exclaimed, "Look out! here