by telling the truth. I won't ask you
more questions, for I have no wish to give you more opportunities of
falsehood. Here are your six stamps. Go to Doctor Ponsford to-morrow
at 8 p.m."

Felgate looked blank at this announcement.

"What!" he exclaimed. "Go to the doctor? Are you going to tell him
about a trifle like this?"

"It is no trifle for a prefect deliberately to break the school rules
and encourage others to do so. I have said the same thing to you
before."

"Look here, Mr Railsford," said Felgate, with a curious mixture of
cringing and menace. "It's not fair to send me to the doctor about a
thing like this. I know you have a spite against me; but you can take
it out of me without bringing him into it. I fancy if you knew all I
know, you'd think twice before you did it."

Railsford looked at him curiously.

"You surely forget, Felgate, that you are not speaking to a boy in the
Shell."

"No, I don't. I know you're a master, and head of a house, and a man
who ought to be everything that's right and good--"

"Come, come," interrupted Railsford, "we have had enough of this. You
are excited and forget yourself to talk in this foolish way."

And he quitted the study.

What, he wondered, could be the meaning of all this wild outbreak on the
part of the detected prefect? What did he mean by that "If you knew all
I know"? It sounded like one of those vague menaces with which Arthur
had been wont to garnish his utterances last term. What did Felgate
know, beyond the secret of his own wrong-doings, which could possibly
affect the Master of the Shell?

It flashed across Railsford suddenly--suggested perhaps by the
connection of two ideas--that Arthur himself might be in some peril or
difficulty. It was long since the master had attempted to control the
secret of his prospective relationship with the vivacious young Shell-
fish. Everybody knew about it as soon as ever he set foot in
Grandcourt, and Daisy's name was common property all over the house.
Arthur had contrived to reap no small advantage from the connection.
The prefects had pretty much left him alone, and, as a relative of the
master, he had been tacitly winked at in many of his escapades, with a
leniency which another boy could not have hoped for.

What if now Arthur should lie under the shadow of some peril which, if
it fell, must envelop him and his brother-in-law both? If, for
instance, he had committed some capital offence, w