" exclaimed the Doctor.

"And I started up in bed, sir. It was all a dream."

"A dream!" cried the Doctor angrily. "Why, my good lad--"

"But it was all so real, sir, and I was thinking about it all day
yesterday, and that perhaps it's possible that I really did do it
walking in my sleep."

"Oh, impossible!" cried the Doctor.

"I don't know, sir," said the boy; "but you see, I might have done so."

"Well--yes, you might," said the Doctor slowly. "I did have a pupil
once who was troubled with somnambulism. He used to walk into the next
dormitory and scare the other boys.--Oh, but this is impossible!"

"I thought you'd say so, sir."

"Yes," said the Doctor, "impossible. Why, if it were true the belt must
have been lying at the bottom of the well ever since the cricket-match
weeks ago."

"Yes, sir, and I must have done it then in my sleep; and the night
before last I dreamed again what I dreamed before."

"Tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut!" ejaculated the Doctor, rising now from
his chair and beginning to walk to and fro excitedly. "Strange--most
strange, and I feel sceptical in the extreme. It must all be
imagination. An empty dream, brought about by the worry and anxiety of
this unfortunate loss. Well, I am glad you have come, my boy, and--er--
er--I must be frank with you. Your manner and the strangeness of your
words half made me think that you had come, urged by your conscience, to
make a confession of a very different kind."

Glyn started; his lips parted, and he looked wildly in the Doctor's
eyes.

"Don't look at me like that, my lad. Your manner suggested it, and I
cannot tell you how relieved I feel."

As the Doctor spoke he leaned over his writing-table and caught the
boy's hand in his, to press it warmly.

"But," he said, as he subsided once more into his chair, "this must be a
hallucination, an offspring of an overworked brain; and yet there are
strange things in connection with the mental organisation, and I feel as
if I ought to take some steps. What a relief it would be, my boy, to us
all, the clearing away of a load of ungenerous suspicion. But one word:
whom have you told of this?"

"No one, sir," said Glyn.

"Not even Mr Singh?"

"No, sir. I have been ever since yesterday thinking about what I ought
to do, and I came to the conclusion at last that I ought to come to you,
sir."

"Quite right, my boy; quite right."

"But it was very hard work, sir--very hard indeed."

"Y