ad, silent journey. To Tom, the
pain caused by every jolt was excruciating. They did their best to ease
him, holding him lying across their knees, while Jim drove along the
level footpath; but by the time the school was reached the sufferer was
again insensible, and so he remained till the surgeon had set his arm.

Thus ended the eventful holiday.

Before Charlie went to bed, the doctor sent for him to his study, and
there required to know the true history of that day's doings. And
Charlie told him all. I need hardly say that, according to his version,
the case against the four culprits was far lighter than had their
impeachment been in other hands. He took to himself whatever blame he
could, and dwelt as little as possible on the plot that had been laid to
get him to Gurley, and on the means which had been used to keep him when
once there. He finished up with a very warm and pathetic appeal for Tom
Drift.

"Don't, please, expel Tom Drift," he said, in all the boldness of
generosity; "he was led on by the others, sir, and he's punished badly
enough as it is. Oh! sir, if you'd seen his mother cry, when she only
spoke of him, you couldn't do it."

"You must leave that to me," said the doctor sternly, "I hope I shall do
nothing that is unjust or unkind. And now go to bed, and thank God for
the care He has taken of you to-day."

And Charlie went.

Tom Drift was not expelled. For weeks he lay ill, and during that time
no nurse was more devoted, and no companion more constant, than Charlie
Newcome. A friendship sprang up between the two, strangely in contrast
with the old footing on which they had stood. No longer was Tom the
vain, hectoring patron, but the docile penitent, over whose spirit
Charlie's character began from that time to exercise an influence which,
if in the time to come it could always have worked as it did now, would
have gone far to save Tom Drift from many a bitter fall and experience.

When Tom, a week before the Christmas holidays, left the sick-room and
took his place once more in his class, Gus, Margetson, and Shadbolt were
no longer inmates of Randlebury School.

CHAPTER TEN.

HOW I CHANGED HANDS AND QUITTED RANDLEBURY.

And now, dear reader, we must take a leap together of three years. For
remember, I am not setting myself to record the life of any one person,
or the events which happened at any one place. I am writing my own
life--or those parts of it which are most memor