start. Instead of having to hunt for a needle in a haystack, he found himself in a moment in the position of being set to find it in a mere truss of straw.
It was Mr. Outwood who helped him. Sergeant Collard had waylaid the archæological expert on his way to chapel, and informed him that at close on twelve the night before he had observed a youth, unidentified, attempting to get into his house viâ the water-pipe. Mr. Outwood, whose thoughts were occupied with apses and plinths, not to mention cromlechs, at the time, thanked the sergeant with absent-minded politeness and passed on. Later he remembered the fact à propos of some reflections on the subject of burglars in mediæval England, and passed it on to Mr. Downing as they walked back to lunch.
"Then the boy was in your house!" exclaimed Mr. Downing.
"Not actually in, as far as I understand. I gather from the sergeant that he interrupted him before"
"I mean he must have been one of the boys in your house."
"But what was he doing out at that hour?"
"He had broken out."
"Impossible, I think. Oh yes, quite impossible! I went round the dormitories as usual at eleven o'clock last night, and all the boys were asleep all of them."
Mr. Downing was not listening. He was in a state of suppressed excitement and exultation which made it hard for him to attend to his colleague's slow utterances. He had a clue! Now that the search had narrowed itself down to Outwood's house, the rest was comparatively easy. Perhaps Sergeant Collard had actually recognised the boy. On reflection he dismissed this as unlikely, for the sergeant would scarcely have kept a thing like that to himself; but he might very well have seen more of him than he, Downing, had seen. It was only with an effort that he could keep himself from rushing to the sergeant then and there, and leaving the
