There was silence for quite a couple of minutes, and every boy present felt that the Doctor was singling him out and was about to speak to him about the committal of some fault, while internally he asked himself what it could be.

At last the great brain-ruler put an end to the suspense by addressing his pupils collectively; and every individual but one drew a breath of relief.

"Young gentlemen," he said, "in my long career of tuition of the boys who have been entrusted to my charge it has been my great desire to inculcate honour."

The three masters glanced at each other, making suggestive grimaces as if questioning what was to come, and at the same time expressing ignorance.

"Now, I regret very much to have to tell you that this morning I have been made aware of a most dishonourable act committed by one of my pupils. I have received by post what I can only term a very degrading letter, which I am sorry to say I fully believe to have been written by some one present. Who that is I do not know, and I tell you all that I would rather not know until the culprit allows his better feelings to obtain the mastery, and comes to me privately and says, `Dr Bewley, I was guilty of that act of folly; but now I bitterly repent, and am here humbly to ask your forgiveness and at the same time that of my fellow-pupil whom I have maligned.' Now, young gentlemen, it gives me pain to address you all for one boy's sin, and I have only this to say, that you whose consciences are clear can let it pa.s.s away like a cloud; to him who has this black speck upon his conscience I only say I am waiting; come to me when the examination is done.--Mr Morris, it is ten minutes past ten. At one o'clock your examination is over, and the studies are at an end for the day.--Now, my dear boys, I wish you all success, and I trust that you will show Mr Morris that his mathematical efforts on your behalf have not been in vain."

There was an end to the painful silence half a minute later, as the Doctor closed the door after him, not loudly, but it seemed to echo among the great beams of the building, while it was long before his slow, heavy step died away upon the gravel path outside.

"Now, young gentlemen," said Morris sharply, "our Princ.i.p.al's address is not to interfere with my examination. You have your papers. Pro--"

There was a pause.

"--Ceed!" shouted Mr Morris.

There was the scratching of pens upon papers, but upon very few; most of the boys taking their pens and putting them down again, to rest their elbows on the desks and their chins upon their thumbs, as they fixed their eyes upon the column-like pile of questions printed quite close to the left side of the sheets of foolscap, while the three masters at the two ends and in the middle of the theatre seated themselves, book in hand, ready to hold up high before their faces so that they could conveniently peer over the top and make certain that there were not any more culprits than one within reach of their piercing eyes.

Mr Morris, to pa.s.s his three hours gently and pleasantly, opened a very old copy, by Blankborough, upon logarithms; Monsieur Brohanne had armed himself with a heavy tome of _La Grande Encyclopedie_, with a bookmark therein at the page dealing with the ancient _langue d'oc_; while Mr Rampson, also linguistical, opened a sickly-looking vellum volume, horribly mildewy and stained, and made as if to read a very brown page of Greek whose characters looked like so many tiny creases and shrinkings in a piece of dry skin.

Only one boy spoke, and that was Glyn Severn, and he to himself; but at the same time he had caught Singh's eye as he sat some distance from him, and, placing his sheet of foolscap by his side, he raised his blotting-pad so that his companion could see a great blotch of ink thereon which seemed as if it had been roughly made by a brush that had been dipped in ink.

This done, he laid the pad back in its place, twisted the fold towards him, and taking a bright, new two-bladed knife that had been purchased with the proceeds of the Colonel's cheque, he opened the large blade and carefully pa.s.sed it along the fold, setting free one half-sheet of the absorbent paper. This he folded and put in his pocket; but the ink had gone through to the next half-sheet, and this he also separated, treating it as he did the first. This left two half-sheets, with the possibility of their slipping about and away from the rest. So, after pocketing his knife, he opened the remainder where they were folded, and refolded the pad inside out, so as to leave the two cut half-sheets in the middle.

"That nasty nuisance of a cat!" he muttered to himself. "It must have come along smelling after poor little Burton's white mice, and smudged my paper like this. Ah," he continued, to himself, "I have promised the poor little chap that I'll lick Master Slegge, and--Hullo! What's this?

What does old Morris mean by giving me half-used paper, and the other fellows new?"

His hands had been busy redoubling and smoothing the fold over the now prisoned half-sheets, and he was about to hold up his hand as a sign to the nearest master that he wanted to speak; but he let it fall again upon the desk, and sat gazing down at some indistinctly seen lines upon the blotting-paper, which looked as if a letter had been inserted wet within the pad and hastily blotted.

He could barely read a word, but somehow his curiosity was aroused, and he turned the leaf over, to find that the newly written letter had been placed in contact with the other side, the lines looking far blacker there, but seen like a page of printing type the reverse way on, so that he could not read a word.

Glyn closed the leaf again and tried to read once more, but with very little success; but for some reason or another his interest was more deeply excited, and he doubled two more leaves over so as to hide the writing, drew forward the foolscap paper to place it once more on the blotting-pad, and then began to read hard at the first section, trying the while to forget all about the freshly blotted letter, but in vain.

For two questions very different from Mr Morris's kept on appealing to him, neither of them algebraic or dealing with Euclid. One was, "How came that letter to be blotted on my pad?" and, "Who was it that wrote it?"

There was no answer; but the boy felt that he knew enough about one of Mr Morris's questions to begin to write the answer, and over this he had been busy for about ten minutes when another question flashed across his brain: "Was this the letter of which the Doctor spoke?"

CHAPTER THIRTY.

BROUGHT TO BOOK.

Not until late that same evening did Glyn have an opportunity of investigating the mystery, for he had purposely refrained from making a confidant of Singh; so that it was after the latter was asleep that Glyn, rising softly, went over to the dressing-table and there lighted the chamber candle, which stood at the side of the looking-gla.s.s.

"Will it be too blurred?" he thought, and he held up in front of the mirror a piece of blotting-paper, and then started, for the occupant of the other bed stirred slightly, causing Glyn to step cautiously to the side of the sleeper.

"He won't wake," muttered Glyn, and he went back to the table and recommenced his task, to find that with the aid of reflection the written words on the spongy surface of the blotting-paper stood out fairly plain, though there was a break here and there. And this is what he read:

"_it was g----ern oo thev the princes_--"

Then there was a blurred line where the ink had run, with only a letter or two distinct at intervals. Then half a blank line, and then, very much blurred and obscure, more resembling a row of blots than so much writing:

"_e as idden--sum whare--for sertane_."

Another line all blotted and indistinct; then:

"_umble Suvvent,--Wun oo nose_."

Then a line in which so obscure and run were the letters that minutes had elapsed before the reader could make out what they meant:

"_toe the doktor_."

Glyn drew back from the gla.s.s as if stung, and then the question which came to him was who had written this abominable, ill-spelt accusation, evidently pointed at himself?

"That was the letter, then, that the Doctor mentioned," he said to himself, and he tried to read the words again, instinctively filling up some of the blanks so as to make the letter fit himself; and it seemed to him that there could only have been one person who was capable of writing such a thing.

He examined the lettering once again--a back-slanting hand, disguised.

"And I have only one enemy--Slegge," he thought to himself, as he softly blew out the candle and crept back into bed; but it was long ere sleep came, for the writing, run by the blotting-paper but still vivid, seemed to dance before his eyes, and as he now mentally read it: "It was Glyn Severn who stole the Prince's belt."

And it was with this to form the subject of his dreams that he fell fast asleep.

On the following morning Glyn entered the cla.s.s-room early and proceeded to Slegge's desk.

"Just as I thought," he said, and he took up one of the writing folio books which lay with other volumes on the desk-cover.

There was no one else in the theatre at that early hour, and Glyn had time to compare as he wished certain of the letters and capitals in Slegge's handwriting with the wording on the blotting-paper.

"It was he; there can be no doubt," he exclaimed, and he went out of the room, making for the playground, intending to find his detractor; but he was not to be seen.

Fortune, however, favoured him as he was making his way back to the schoolhouse, for near the boys' gardens he suddenly caught sight of the object of his search.

"I say, Slegge," he said, approaching the lad, "I want to talk to you."

It did not seem to be quite the same self-confident bully of the day previous who responded, "Eh? You do, Severn? What's up?"

"Come into the cla.s.s-room," said Severn. "I want you."

"What!" began Slegge. "What do you mean? Why are you trying to order me about?"

"Because I have something to tell you."

"Ha, ha, c.o.c.ky Severn! It's time you had that thrashing."

"Is it?" said Glyn. "Well, I don't think I should care to fight with a fellow who writes anonymous letters."

"What do you mean by that?" cried the other.