He opened the door, pulling it to again after him as he crept inside; then taking a step forward in the pitchy darkness, promptly fell over a bucket with an appalling crash.

Scrambling once more to his feet, he felt in his waistcoat pocket, and finding there a fusee which he remembered to have taken from a box owned by "Rats," he struck it, and by the aid of its feeble glare crept behind the heap of benches which lay piled up close to the opposite wall.
Hardly had he done so when there were a sound of footsteps and a murmur of conversation; the door was opened, and some one crept into the den.
No sooner had the new-comer crossed the threshold than he stopped, sniffed audibly, and exclaimed,-- "Hullo! what a stink of fusees! Who's been here, I wonder ?" Diggory instantly recognized the voice as belonging to Noaks, and the sound of it brought a momentary recollection of the time when he and Jack Vance had lain concealed behind the hedge opposite to Horace House.

His heart beat fast, and he vainly wished that he had had sufficient forethought to come provided with some ordinary matches.
Several more boys entered, and one of them struck a light.

Diggory, peering through an aperture in the pile of forms, saw at a glance who they were--Fletcher senior, Thurston, Noaks, and Hawley.
"There don't seem to be any one about," continued Noaks, peering into the corners; "yet it's rum there should be such a smell of fusees." "I expect it was the man," said Thurston, producing a candle-end, and sticking it in an empty ginger-beer bottle which lay on the ground.
"He was in here this afternoon after some of those old boxes, and I expect he lit his pipe.

The smell is sure to hang about when the door's shut." The four boys sat down on two upturned buckets and a couple of old hampers, with the candle in their midst, and Diggory gave vent to an inward sigh of relief.
"Well," began Thurston, "one reason we meet here to-night is because I wanted to explain to you fellows that we can't have any more of those pleasant little parties in my study--at all events, for the present.
Until this row about Browse has blown over, every one'll be watching us like cats watching a mouse.