"I will show you what I mean if you come with me. I don't suppose you want the other fellows to hear it."

"I don't care," said Slegge. "Some c.o.c.k-and-bull story you are hatching, Severn."

"You wrote that letter," said Glyn abruptly, and his voice sounded husky with the emotion and rage that were gathering in his breast.

"Letter? Letter? What do you mean? Has one come for me by the post?"

"You know what letter I mean," burst out Severn.

"Here, I say," cried Slegge, with a most perfect a.s.sumption of innocence; and he looked round as if speaking to a whole gathering of their schoolfellows, "what's he talking about? I don't know. Isn't going off his head, is he?"

"That letter the Doctor was talking about yesterday morning," cried Glyn, with the pa.s.sion within beginning to master him.

"Here, I don't know what you mean," cried Slegge. "You seem to have got out of bed upside down, or else you haven't woke up yet. What do you mean by your letters?"

"You miserable shuffler!" cried Glyn, in a voice almost inaudible from rage. "The Doctor only talked about a letter; but I've found you out."

"No, you haven't," cried Slegge truculently; "you have found me in--in here by the gardens, and if you have come down here to have it out once more before breakfast, come along down to the elms. I am your man."

"That's just what I should like to do," panted Severn, whose hands kept opening and shutting as they hung by his sides; and there was something in the boy's looks that made Slegge change colour slightly, and he glanced quickly to right and left as if in search of the support of his fellows; but there was no one within sight.

"But," continued Glyn, "if you think I am going to lower myself by fighting a dirty, cowardly hound who has struck at me behind the back like the dishonourable cur that the Doctor said he was waiting to see come and confess what he had done, you are mistaken."

"There, I knew it!" cried Slegge. "You are afraid. Put up your hands, or I will give you the coward's blow."

To the bully's utter astonishment, one of Glyn's hands only rose quick as lightning and had him by the throat.

"You dare!" he cried. "Strike me if you dare! Yes, it would be a coward's blow. But if you do I won't answer for what will happen, for I shall forget what you have done, and--and--"

"Here, Severn! Severn! What's the matter with you?" gasped Slegge excitedly. "I haven't done anything. Are you going mad?"

"You have, you blackguard!" cried Glyn, forcing the fellow back till he had him up against the garden-fence. "You have always hated me ever since I licked you, and like the coward you are you stooped to write that dirty, ill-spelt, abominable letter to make the Doctor think I had stolen Singh's belt."

"Oh, I don't know what you mean," whined Slegge. "Let go, will you?"

"No!" cried Glyn, raising his other hand to catch Slegge by the wrist.

"Not till I've made you do what the Doctor asked for--taken you to his room and made you confess."

"Confess? I haven't got anything to confess. You are mad, and I don't know what you mean," cried Slegge, whose face was now white. "Let go, or I'll call for help."

"Do," cried Glyn, "and I'll expose you before everybody. You coward!

Why, a baby could have seen through your miserable sham, ill-spelt letter, with the words all slanting the wrong way."

"I don't know what letter you mean. Has the Doctor been showing you the letter he was talking about?"

"No," said Glyn mockingly, as he read in the troubled face before him that he was quite right. "But I have read it all the same, on the piece of blotting-paper that you used to dry what you had written--the sheet of blotting-paper that was put ready on my desk so that if it were found it might seem that I was the writer."

"That I wrote?" said Slegge, with a forced laugh. "That you wrote, you mean, before you sent it. I don't know what for, unless you wanted people to think that it was done by some one who didn't like you. What do you mean by accusing me?"

"Because you are not so clever as you thought. Come on here to the cla.s.s-room. I have been there this morning, and laid the blotting-paper by the side of one of your exercises on your desk; and, clever as you thought yourself, the Doctor will see at a glance that some of the letters, in spite of the way you wrote them, could only have been written by you." And here he took a piece of paper out--a piece that he had torn from Slegge's exercise-book--and laid beside it the unfolded blotting-paper.

Slegge made a dash at them, but Glyn was too quick. Throwing one hand behind his back, he pressed Slegge with the other fiercely against the fence.

"There!" he cried triumphantly. "That's like confessing it. Come on to the Doctor. There's Mr Morris yonder.--Mr--"

"No, no, don't! Pray don't call!"

"Hah!" cried Glyn triumphantly. "Then you did write it?"

"I--I--"

"Speak! You did write it, you coward! Now confess!"

"Well, I--I was in a pa.s.sion, and I only thought it would be a lark."

"You were in a pa.s.sion, and you thought it would be a lark!" cried Glyn scornfully. "You muddle-headed idiot, you did it to injure me, for you must have had some idea in your stupid thick brain that it would do me harm. But come on. You have confessed it, and you shan't go alone to the Doctor to say that you repent and that you are sorry for it all, for you shall come with me. Quick! Now, at once, before the breakfast-bell rings; and we will see what the Doctor says. Perhaps he will understand it better than I do, for I hardly know what you meant."

"No, no, don't! Pray don't, Severn! Haven't I owned up? What more do you want?" And the big lad spoke with his lips quivering and a curious twitching appearing about the corners of his mouth; but Glyn seemed as hard as iron.

"What more do I want? I want the Doctor to know what a miserable coward and bully he has in the school."

"No, no," gasped Slegge, in a low, husky voice, and with his face now all of a quiver. "I can't--I won't! I tell you I can't come!"

"And I tell you you shall come," cried Glyn, dragging him along a step or two.

"Don't, I tell you! You will have Morris see," gasped Slegge.

"I want him to see, and all the fellows to see what a coward we have got amongst us. So come along."

Slegge caught him by the lapel of his jacket, and with his voice changing into a piteous whisper, "Pray, pray don't, Severn!" he panted.

"Do you know what it means?"

"I know what it ought to mean," cried Glyn mockingly; "a good flogging; but the Doctor won't give you that."

"No," whispered the lad piteously. "I'd bear that; but he'd send me back home in disgrace. There was a fellow here once, and the Doctor called it expelled. Severn, old chap, I am going to leave at the end of this half. It will be like ruin to me, for everything will be known.

There, I confess. I was a fool, and what you called me."

"Then come like a man and say that to the Doctor."

"I can't! I can't! I--oh, Severn! Severn!"

The poor wretch could get out no more articulately, but sank down upon his knees, fighting hard for a few moments to master himself, but only to burst forth into a fit of hysterical sobbing.

The pitiful, appealing face turned up to him mastered Glyn on the instant, and he loosened his hold, to glance round directly in the direction of Morris, and then back.

"Get up," he said, "and don't do that. Come along here."

"No, no; I can't go before the Doctor. Severn, you always were a good fellow--a better chap than I am. Pray, pray, forgive me this once!"