"You—you won't want me?" asked Plunger anxiously. He had a keen recollection of what had happened at the shed the last time he was there.
"Of course we shall. You'll have to take us to the shed and show us what's inside it."
Plunger did not like this suggestion. Why couldn't Newall have selected Moncrief minor? But he could not very well raise any objection. So, making a virtue of necessity, he raised his eyebrows to their fullest extent, and said he should be "delighted."
Then came the question as to who should go with Plunger. It was not advisable to take too many, for fear of the risk of discovery. So Newall decided that only three should accompany Plunger—Stanley, Parfitt, and himself. Stanley would gladly have given way to anybody else, but Newall insisted that he should be one of the party. He seemed determined to leave no stone unturned to blacken Paul in the eyes of his one-time friend.
Stanley crept away as soon as he could to the solitude of his dormitory.
He was very wretched. He felt as though he were acting a mean part. It might be true that Paul was not the friend to him that he had at one time been—that he had gone over to the Bedes, and acted a mean part; but that was no reason why he should act a mean part, too. Two blacks did not make a white. "Percival will be kicked out of Garside!" Newall's words kept repeating themselves in his brain. He could not forget them. Percival would be kicked out of Garside, and he would be one of those who had helped to kick him out.
No, no; whatever wrong Paul had done him, he could not do that. But how could he prevent it? How could he put him on his guard? He thought for a long time; then he got a half-sheet of notepaper, and wrote on it in a disguised hand:
"Beware! Steer clear of Bedes. Plot on foot to turn you from Garside."
The next difficulty to get over was—how to get that note to Paul without rousing suspicion. It must be read by him, and him alone. He was a long time before he could think of any means of accomplishing this purpose; then he remembered that Paul was in the habit of reading a few verses every night before going to rest from a Bible given to him by his mother. He went to Paul's dormitory—the dormitory in which he had once slept, and to which he had often longed to get back.
Glancing cautiously in, he found that it was empty. He crept softly to Paul's locker, and drew out his Bible. There was a bookmark in it. He opened it at the bookmark. The first words that met his eyes were: