"Explain it? Who could! It just happened," said Robin Arkness, the Fourth Form boy who had led the cheering. "You know how it is, Cayton—the wider you open your mouth to shout the tighter your eyes close. I just yelled myself blind."
"Oh, come, now! You had Clodhopper Jim bang in the midst of you behind the goal. Some of you must have given him a final leg-up over the ropes."
"We didn't!" was Robin's indignant denial.
Roger thought he detected a shade of emphasis on the "we".
"Who did, then?" he sharply inquired.
But Robin and his chums—known at Foxenby as "Robin Hood and his Merry Men", because of their escapades in the school shrubbery or "Forest"—were not to be drawn. Their ranks were recruited from both houses, and it was an unwritten law amongst them that nothing to the detriment of either house should ever be spoken outside the select circle.
"We were awfully pipped about it, honour bright, Cayton," said their frank-faced spokesman, evasively. "Why, to be sure, aren't we just as proud as peacocks to know that our rousing cheer bucked old Forge into that great run? And we didn't half 'lam' Fluffy Jim for butting in and queering the pitch—eh, chaps, what?"
"Rather!" the Merry Men chanted, in fervent chorus.
"Oh, cut away—skedaddle!" cried Roger, losing patience. "You're shielding somebody, and that's a rotten thing for men of honour to do when Foxenby's reputation is at stake."
Leaving this barb to rankle, as he knew it would, in the hearts of the young adventurers, who prided themselves on being loyal to the core, Roger returned to the study which he and Dick Forge shared between them.