"No; what about?"
"Oh, the same thing as before. Some fellows were making a beastly row in Thurston's study, and Browse couldn't work, so he threatened if they weren't quiet he'd report them to the doctor. 'Thirsty' came out in an awful wax, and said for two pins he'd knock Browse down; and young Collis, who was standing at the top of the stairs, says he believes he'd have done it if some of the other fellows in the Sixth hadn't come out and interfered."
In the course of the afternoon Diggory secured Mugford's copy of Poe's tales, and (sad to relate) spent a good part of that evening's preparation in trying to unravel the secret of the mysterious missive which he had found in the box-room. So intent was he on solving the problem that, instead of going down to supper with the majority of his companions, he remained seated at his desk, poring over the experiments which he was making according to directions given in the famous story of "The Gold Bug."
"Well, how are you getting on ?" inquired Jack Vance, as the crowd came straggling back from the dining-hall.
"Oh, pretty well," answered the other. "The first thing you have to do is to find E; it's the letter which occurs most frequently. Well, in this case V is the letter which comes oftenest—there are fourteen of them—so V is E. Then, when you know what E is, you search for the word 'the.' There are certain to be several 'the's' in the piece; so you look for instances in which the same two letters come before E, or, in this case, before V. Well, here it is, G S V, five times; so you are pretty certain that G S V is 'the,' or, in other words, that G is T, S is H, and V is E. That's as far as I've got at present; but I mean to worry out the rest of it to-morrow."
While Diggory was holding forth in the big schoolroom on his methods of reading a cipher, a conversation of a very different character, and on a matter of grave importance, was taking place in the study of the school captain.
Allingford and John Acton were seated in front of the former's little fireplace talking over matters connected with the football club. Suddenly there was a sound of hurrying feet in the passage; the next instant the door burst open, and in bounced Browse. The two prefects gazed at him for a moment in open-mouthed astonishment; then Acton broke the silence, exclaiming, "Why, Browse, what's the matter?"
The "sap" certainly presented an extraordinary appearance. His spectacles were gone; his hair was pasted all over his face, as though he had just come up from a long dive; his clothes were torn, and in a state of the wildest disorder; while the strangest part of all was that from head to foot he seemed soaking wet, drenched through and through with water, which dripped from his garments as he stood.
"Why, man alive!" cried Allingford, "what have you been up to?"
"It's those blackguards!" gasped Browse, choking with rage, and shaken for once in a way out of his usual drawl; "it's that Thurston and his crew—I know it was!"