"Look out, then, Dory!" added Matt, laying his hand on the shoulder of his companion. "The burglars may be still in the office; and such fellows carry revolvers, which they use when they get into a tight place."
"They can hardly be here now, after they have taken the trouble to wake up the entire neighborhood with such an explosion," replied Dory. "Take this lamp, Matt, and I will get in at the window, and strike a light."
"Don't do it, Dory!" protested Matt. "Wait a moment, and I will go back to the dormitory, and get a lantern out of the lower hall."
Without waiting for his companion, Matt ran back to the dormitory. A couple of lanterns were kept there for the use of the students in the evening, if they had occasion to go to the shops or elsewhere. Matt took one of them down, and lighted it, for there were matches in the tin box on the wall. When he had done so, he concluded to light the other, so that each of them could have one in conducting the examination.
Dory stood at the open window while his companion was gone; for he agreed with Matt, that prudence was a virtue at all times: and reasonable people practise it, unless they get too angry to do so, and then they regret it afterwards. He had begun to think that Matt was gone a long time, when he heard a sound inside of the office.
The noise startled him, for he had not believed the robbers delayed their flight so long after they had taken the trouble to announce themselves to all within hearing. He listened with his head thrust into the open window as far as the length of his neck would permit, and he was intensely interested from that moment.
If there were any robbers in the office, they must have heard what Matt said when he proposed to go for the lantern. Dory had always read the newspapers; and he knew something about the operations of burglars, though he lived far from any great city. The night-visitors to the office of the institution, he concluded, had blown open the steel safe, or attempted to do so. If they had succeeded, it could not have taken them more than a minute or two to scoop out the contents of the safe, or at least to pocket the money it contained.
He was just making up his mind that the burglars must have departed before any one had had time to come to the office, when the noise he had heard before was repeated. It sounded like some mechanical operation, and appeared to be on the farther side of the room, where there was a door opening into the carpenter's shop.
"I was a fool not to open this door before we finished the safe!" said some one in the room, in a low and subdued voice, and in a tone which indicated his disgust at the situation in which he found himself.
"Hurry up! The fellow will be back with the lantern in a moment, and then we shall be blown," added another voice.