“I say our blunders, for of course Stapleton and I are drilled with the recruits.  However, I think that in another week I shall be over that, and shall then begin to learn my work as an officer.  They are a jolly set of fellows here, always up to some fun or other.  I always thought when fellows got to be men they were rather serious, but it seems to me that there is ever so much more fun here among them than there was at school.  Of course newcomers get worried a little just as they do at school.  I got off very well; because, you see, what with school and the privateer I have learned to take things good temperedly, and when fellows see that you are as ready for fun as they are they soon give up bothering you.

“Stapleton has had a lot more trouble; because, you see, he will look at things seriously.  I think he is getting a little better now; but he used to get quite mad at first, and of course that made fellows ever so much worse.  He would find his door screwed up when he went back after mess; and as soon as they found that he was awfully particular about his boots, they filled them all full of water one night.  Then some one got a ladder and threw a lot of crackers into his bedroom in the middle of the night, and Stapleton came rushing down in his night-shirt with his sword drawn, swearing he would kill somebody.

“Of course I have done all I can to get them to leave him alone, for he is really a good fellow, and explained to them that he had never been to school, or had a chance of learning to keep his temper.  But he is getting on now, and will, I think, soon be left alone.  This has been an awfully long letter, and there is only just enough candle left for me to get into bed by.  Anyhow mother, I am not a bit upset about losing Mr. Penfold’s allowance; so don’t you worry yourself at all about that.”

Some weeks passed on.  Mr. Tallboys wrote that he had failed to induce the court to accept the copy of the will, the admission he was forced to make that Mr. Penfold had intended to make an alteration in it being fatal.  He had, however, obtained an order authorizing him thoroughly to search the house, and to take down any wainscotting, and to pull up any floors that might appear likely to conceal a hiding-place.  A fortnight later he wrote again to announce his failure.

“The Miss Penfolds,” he said, “were so indignant that they left the house altogether, and you may believe that we ransacked it from top to bottom.  I had four carpenters and two masons with me, and I think we tapped every square foot of wall in the house, took down the wainscotting wherever there was the slightest hollow sound, lifted lots of the flooring, and even wrenched up several of the hearthstones, but could find nothing whatever, except that there was a staircase leading from behind the wainscotting in Mr. Penfold’s room to a door covered with ivy, and concealed from view by bushes to the left of the house; but the ivy had evidently been undisturbed for fifty years or so, this passage, even if known to Mr. Penfold, had certainly not been used in his time.