He let them one after another jostle past, being busy watching the Doctor as, slowly and with care, he stepped down from off the platform, and followed the other masters out. With a sort of fascination, he looked at the door as it swung slowly to, and the bang with which at last it shut seemed to announce that now indeed he was cut off from every possibility of help and left to sink or swim by himself. So turning dolefully in the opposite direction, he went out by the double-doors through which the others had disappeared. In the little stone-flagged passage just outside there was no one to be seen, but through a brick archway on the left was a steep dark staircase which must be that up which he had heard them go clattering a few minutes before. He was already sorry he had stayed behind; had he not done so he would not now have had to face them all at once, but going with the rest might perhaps have escaped notice altogether. However he could not stay where he was:
'I think I'll go up here!' he said out loud, and so began to mount the stairs, groping and stumbling as he went, for the steps were evidently much worn, nor was: there any light to show you where you ought to tread.
At the top was a small landing, and on the farther side a door; this he pushed open and then stopped short, dazed by the sudden change from darkness into light and taken aback by the general shout with which his appearance was greeted by the rest of the boys. He hesitated however but for a moment and then, moving forward half-mechanically, he saw himself in an instant surrounded by a crowd all hustling up about him, and all at the top of their voices asking questions of all sorts and kinds. Unable to distinguish a single voice amidst the din or a single face amongst the many which were pressing in on him at once, he was trying to think of what to say, when, with a sort of laugh that he had never heard before, one of them gave a companion a quick shove and sent him cannoning against him with a force so great as almost to bring them both to the ground; at the same instant he heard a cry:
