had been
swished. And now all sorts of wild rumours began to go round. All the
fellows in the small room at the end of Williams's dormitory were going
to be swished--so extensive was the order sent to the gardener for the
manufacture of birch rods, declared some, who affected to be in the
know. But the centre light of all the excitement and conjecture was
Haviland. He was not a prefect now, and therefore could,
constitutionally, be swished. But--would he take it? That was the
point--would he take it? Some opined that he would not--others that he
would have to.

"Silence! Ss-silence there!" roared the prefects, with a force and
unanimity that hushed the room in a minute. For it meant that the
Doctor was coming in.

You might have heard a pin drop in that hitherto buzzing assemblage as
the Headmaster ascended to the big desk in the middle and signed for the
door to be shut. Then it was seen that there stood before him of
culprits exactly one dozen, of whom all but two were in varying stages
of funk.

The Doctor, you see, acting upon his usual thorough and whole-hearted
method, had wasted no time in elaborate investigations. He had simply
sent for Haviland and taxed him with what was charged, and Haviland,
disdaining to prevaricate or make excuses, had owned his whole share in
the alleged misdoing, and rather more, for he had endeavoured to shield
Anthony by declaring that the Zulu boy had been entirely influenced by
him; nor would it have helped him any way to have denied the matter, for
the Doctor meanwhile had ordered the search of every box in the
dormitory, and there in Haviland's box was the coil of cord, and in that
of Anthony the blood-stained weapon. Further, with the same
thoroughness, he had chosen to consider the whole room as in a degree
implicated.

Now, confronting the whole school, speaking in his most awe-inspiring
tones, the Doctor commenced his harangue. He dwelt on the complaints
that had been coming in for some time past of serious depredations in
the game preserves of the neighbouring landowners, and how such were
entirely detrimental to the credit of the school, as also to its
interests in another way, for the time had now arrived when it had
become a grave question whether the reasonable liberty which had always
been its privilege should not be withdrawn. Here a stir of sensation
went through the listeners, who began to think that this rare
excitement, even to those not the most