From within the school were heard alternately, with the regularity of a
mill, the piping of an old cracked voice and the brave chanting of a
childish chorus. Under the school, where the light was dim and the air
was decidedly musty, two small boys were crouched, playing a silent game
of 'stag knife.' Besides being dark and evil-smelling under there, it was
damp; great clammy masses of cobweb hung from the joists and spanned the
spaces between the piles. The place was haunted by strange and fearsome
insects, too, and the moving of the classes above sent showers of dust
down between the cracks in the worn floor. But those boys were satisfied
that they were having a perfectly blissful time, and were serenely happy
in defiance of unpropitious surroundings. They were 'playing the wag,'
and to be playing the wag under any circumstances is a guarantee of pure
felicity to the average healthy boy.

Probably the excessive heat had suggested to Dick Haddon the advisability
of spending the afternoon under the school instead of within the close
crowded room; at any rate he suggested it to Jacker McKnight, commonly
known as Jacker Mack, and now after an hour of it the boys were still
jubilant. The game had to be played with great caution, and conversation
was conducted in whispers when ideas could not be conveyed in dumb show.
All that was going on in the room above was distinctly audible to the
deserters below, and the joy of camping there out of the reach of Joel
Ham, B.A., and beyond all the trials and tribulations of the Higher
Fifth, and hearing other fellows being tested, and hectored, and caned,
was too tremendous for whisperings, and must be expressed in wild
rollings and contortions and convulsive kicking.

'Parrot Cann, will you kindly favour me with a few minutes on the floor?'

It was the old cracked voice, flavoured with an ominous irony. Dick