"Thieves!"
"Fire!"
"Help! Help!"
The whole house was aroused. The cries of confusion and alarm coming from the Fifth Form dormitory were repeated by others who, entirely ignorant as to what was the matter, and aroused from slumber by the noise, tumbled from their beds and rushed out wildly, under the impression that nothing less than the house being ablaze could account for the cry.
The doctor and masters came hurrying to the spot; and while the Head ran to the Fifth Form room, the master got the other boys into something like order, ready to be marched quietly downstairs if the alarm of fire should prove to be well founded.
The first thing that the doctor noted was the open window and the ladder, and the next, that a confused babel of sound was going on in the Fifth's room; and as he strode to the door he was met, full tilt, by a boy with torn clothes, apparently seeking to free himself from the grasp of half a dozen Fifth Form boys. To his bewilderment, the Head saw that this boy was his new scholar, Ralph Rexworth.
His strong hand gripped the boy's arm, and his voice thundered out a command for silence, which the boys obeyed all save Ralph, who cried—
"If you do not follow him at once, he will be off, sir! These fellows stopped me, and he has got a good start!"
"He! Who?" cried the Head. And the boy replied—
"The man who was in the Fifth, sir. He knocked me down, and bolted; and then the boys woke, and got me, and would not let me go!"