"Why—why, hang it, Boston, what's up—eh?"
"'Up!'—all over me—choking me—Treacle!" gasped my friend, creeping through the window, with difficulty, as he spoke, and losing his balance, as he reached the ground, he fell against me, stuck to me, disengaged himself, and finally stood upright.
"Treacle!" I ejaculated with a roar, which even though the doctor might have heard I could not suppress, as Charley began clearing out his eyes and mouth with his already sticky fists.
"Yes, treacle," crossly. "You needn't laugh like that, Bob, and make such a confounded fool of yourself," he growled. "I stumbled, somehow, and fell face forward into a pan of it. Don't make such a row, Travers!" as I continued my cachination and held my aching sides, "I might have been smothered for all you would have cared. By Jove! smothered in treacle! Why a butt of Malmsey would be a natural death in comparison."
"The treacle we have for our puddings and with our brimstone?" I gasped at last.
"Yes." Here the ludicrous aspect of affairs struck the martyr, and he joined me in my merriment.
"I didn't know where I was going until I was in it," he continued. "Ugh! I shall hate treacle like poison for the rest of my life! Where are the other fellows?"
"Sneaked away; thought Omega had caught you."
"Cowards!"
At this moment a low whistle, a danger signal, from the boys just denounced, caused us to hurry from the spot, and reaching the rope ladder, we were up it like cats, gaining our room just in time to find that, by the light shining under the door, some one was on the alert.