for six checkered years.

The visitors looked on delighted. Number Five study had a reputation
for more variegated insanity than the rest of the school put
together; and so far as its code allowed friendship with outsiders it
was polite and open-hearted to its neighbors on the same landing.

"What rot do you want now?" said Beetle.

"King! War!" said McTurk, jerking his head toward the wall, where hung
a small wooden West-African war-drum, a gift to McTurk from a naval
uncle.

"Then we shall be turned out of the study again," said Beetle, who
loved his flesh-pots. "Mason turned us out for--just warbling on it."
Mason was the mathematical master who had testified in Common-room.

"Warbling?--O Lord!" said Abanazar. "We couldn't hear ourselves speak
in our study when you played the infernal thing. What's the good of
getting turned out of your study, anyhow?"

"We lived in the form-rooms for a week, too," said Beetle, tragically.
"And it was beastly cold."

"Ye-es, but Mason's rooms were filled with rats every day we were out.
It took him a week to draw the inference," said McTurk. "He loathes
rats. 'Minute he let us go back the rats stopped. Mason's a little
shy of us now, but there was no evidence."

"Jolly well there wasn't," said Stalky, "when I got out on the roof