At seven o'clock the Fifth Form began to put in an appearance at the shed. Arbery and Leveson were two of the first. They lit a candle, and stuck it in a tin candle-stick. Then they rolled out one of the boxes that were piled up at the back, placed it lengthwise, so as to form a rostrum, and covered it with a baize cloth. On the top of this they placed a wooden mallet, used for knocking in the stumps in the cricketing season.
"Sounds all right," said Leveson, giving the mallet a flourish over his head, and bringing it down sharply on top of the box. "Order—order for the chair!"
Down it came a second time.
"Friends, Romans, and Countrymen——"
"Drop the cackle, Levy," shouted Arbery, "and give me a hand."
He was pulling out some of the boxes, and Leveson lent him a hand to arrange them as seats. It so happened that in one of the most dilapidated of these boxes, which had rested for weeks in the darkest corner of the shed, Frederick Plunger, Esq. was reposing. It had been selected as the most suitable hiding-place by the conspirators. It was large and commodious, and there were so many cracks and crannies in the worm-eaten, dilapidated lid that there was ample breathing space within.
In this safe hiding-place Plunger had flattered himself that he would be able to know all that passed at the meeting of the Fifth. He had not calculated on the box being shifted from its dusty, cob-webbed corner. But more by chance than design Arbery laid profane hands on it, and dragging it out with the rest, turned it over and over, something after the style of a porter with the luggage at a railway terminus in the busy season.
Bumpety—bumpety! It seemed to Plunger, so far as he had any sensation at all, that he was performing the part of a human catherine-wheel.
"My!" he gasped. "What are the asses doing with the box? I shall be most frightfully sick if they don't stop it."
Bumpety—bumpety—bumpety!