But even they must wait now till we were sure about the pond.
For Dicky and I stood liable to as big a row as the assassin of Hector himself if anything went wrong with our experiment in engineering.
Luckily very few fellows haunted this particularly muddy corner of the grounds, and now that Hector was above a daily bath, there was little chance of Plummer himself discovering the remarkably low tide on his premises--still less of his poking about among the stones in the bed of the pool.
To our great relief we found that our dam at the foot was holding out bravely, and that comparatively little water was trickling through the bank into the shrubbery.

The flow at the upper end, however, was distressingly small, and though a whole night had passed we could still see the heap of stones under which the pistol was buried rising up from the shallow puddles around it, inviting investigation.
With astounding industry we worked away that morning, widening and deepening the little channel along which the rivulet made its way to the pond.

And before we had done we had the satisfaction of seeing a fairly brisk inflow.

We would fain have waited to see the fatal little island disappear below the surface.

But the first bell was already an sounding when the water completed the circle, leaving it standing up more prominent than ever.
To our horror, at this precise moment Tempest strolled down.
"Hullo! what are you two after?
Fishing?
One way to catch them, letting all the water out." "It was an experiment," said Dicky, who, like myself, was very pale as he looked first at the Dux, then at the guilty hillock in the pond.
"So it seems.