blubbed, too, and Stalky confessed that he'd been a thief in regular
practice for six years, ever since he came to the school; and that
I'd taught him--_a_la_ Fagin. Mason turned white with joy. He thought
he had us on toast."

"Gorgeous! Gorgeous!" said Dick Four. "We never heard of this."

"'Course not. Mason kept it jolly quiet. He wrote down all our
statements on impot-paper. There wasn't anything he wouldn't
believe," said Stalky.

"And handed it all up to the Head, _with_ an extempore prayer. It took
about forty pages," said Beetle. "I helped him a lot."

"And then, you crazy idiots?" said Abanazar.

"Oh, we were sent for; and Stalky asked to have the 'depositions' read
out, and the Head knocked him spinning into a waste-paper basket.
Then he gave us eight cuts apiece--welters--for--for--takin'
unheard-of liberties with a new master. I saw his shoulders shaking
when we went out. Do you know," said Beetle, pensively, "that Mason
can't look at us now in second lesson without blushing? We three stare
at him sometimes till he regularly trickles. He's an awfully
sensitive beast."

"He read 'Eric, or Little by Little,'" said McTurk; "so we gave him
'St. Winifred's, or the World of School.' They spent all their spare
time stealing at St. Winifred's, when they weren't praying or getting
drunk at pubs. Well, that was only a week ago, and the Head's a
little bit shy of us. He called it constructive deviltry. Stalky