"I wonder what the joke is! Another moth-hunt, or some more of that 'stocks' business, I suppose." When the two friends entered the reading-room, it presented an unusually quiet and orderly appearance.

About twenty boys were seated at the various desks and tables, all occupied with games of chess or draughts, or in the perusal of magazines and papers.

Even Grundy, who never read anything but an occasional novel, was poring over the advertisement columns of _The Daily News_, with apparently great interest, while young Fletcher was equally engrossed in the broad pages of _The Times_.
An attempt to put "Rats" in the stocks utterly failed, from the fact that those who were usually foremost in acts of disorder refused to render any assistance, and even went so far as to nip the disturbance in the bud with angry ejaculations of "Here, dry up!"-- "Stop it, can't you ?" "I say," murmured Diggory, after sitting for a quarter of an hour listlessly turning over the pages of a magazine, "Fletcher's sold us about that lark; I don't see the use of staying here any longer." Hardly had the words been uttered when some one in the passage outside crowed like a cock.

There was a rustling of newspapers, and the next instant all four gas-jets were turned out simultaneously, and the room was plunged in total darkness.

What followed it would be difficult to describe.