The Fifth-form boy insisted on the bed being made from the very beginning--including the turning of the mattress and the shaking of each several sheet and blanket--so that the process was a lengthy one, and, but for the occasional consolations of the slipper, might have become chilly also.
"Now, clear out," said the owner of the apartment.
"Where am I to go ?" asked Heathcote, beginning to feel rather forlorn.
"Out of here!" repeated the senior.
"I don't--" The senior took up the slipper again.
"Please may I take my clothes ?" said Heathcote.
"Are you going or not ?" "Please give me my trou--" He was on the other side of the door before the second syllable came, and the click of the latch told him that after all he might save his breath.
Heathcote was in a predicament.

The corridor was dark, and draughty, and he was far from home; what was he to do?
"Three courses," as the wise man says, "were open to him." Either he might camp out where he was, and by the aid of door-mats and carpet extemporise a bed till the morning; or he might commence a demonstration against the door from which he had just been ejected till somebody came and saw him into his rights--or, failing his rights, into his trousers; or he might commence a house-to-house canvass, up one side of the corridor and down the other, in hopes of finding either an empty chamber or one tenanted by a friend.
There was a good deal to be said for each, though on the whole he personally inclined to the last course.

Indeed he went so far as to grope his way to the end of the passage with a view to starting fair, when a sound of footsteps and a white flutter ahead sent his heart to his mouth, and made him shiver with something more than the evening breeze.
He stood where he was, rooted to the spot, and listened.

An awful silence seemed to fall upon the place.

Had he hit on the Templeton ghost ?--on the disembodied spirit of some luckless martyr to the ferocity of a last century bully?
Or, was it an ambuscade prepared for himself?
or, was it some companion in-- Yes! there was a sob, and Heathcote's soul rejoiced as he recognised it.
"Is that you, young 'un ?" he said in a deep whisper.
The footsteps suddenly ceased, the white flutter stopped, and next moment there rose a shriek in the still night air which made all Westover's jump in its sleep, and opened, as if by magic, half the doors in the long corridor.