ed 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
class-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 passion, and I only thought it would be a lark."

"You were in a passion, and you thought it would be a lark