odthirsty conspiracies into effect had not Mr Rastle caught him
one day with a saw, sawing the legs off the writing-master's stool, and
given him such a chastisement, bodily and mental, as induced him for a
brief season to retire from public life, and devote all his spare time
to copying out an imposition.

On the first morning after reassembling, Mr Jellicott, the master in
charge of Saint Dominic's, summoned the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth to meet
him in the lecture-theatre, and there announced to them the reason of
the head master's absence.

"In consequence of this," said Mr Jellicott, "the removes gained last
term will not be put into force for a week or two, till the head master
returns; but, meanwhile, Dr Senior is anxious that the work of the
school should go on as usual. We shall, therefore, resume studies
to-morrow; and on Monday next the examination for the Waterston
Exhibition will be held, as arranged. The three boys--Loman, Greenfield
senior, and Wraysford--entered for this will be excused ordinary lessons
till after the examination."

Greenfield senior! Then Oliver _was_ in for it after all! The
announcement amazed Wraysford as much as it did Loman and every one
else. It had never entered their minds that he would go in for it.
Hadn't he got the Nightingale? and wasn't that enough for one half-year?
And didn't every one know _how_ he had got it, and how could the fellow
now have the assurance to put in for another examination?

Oliver always had been a queer fellow, and this move struck every one as
queerer than ever.

But to Wraysford and one or two others it occurred in a different light.
If Oliver had really won the Nightingale in the manner every one
suspected, he would hardly now boldly enter for another examination, in
which he might possibly not succeed, and so prove those suspicions to be
true. For the subjects were almost exactly the same as those examined
in for the Nightingale, and unless Oliver did as well here as he did
there--and that was _remarkably_ well--it would be open for anybody to
say, "Of course--he couldn't steal the paper this time, that's why!"

Wraysford, as he thought over it, became more and more uneasy and
ashamed of himself. One moment he persuaded himself Oliver was a
hypocrite, and the next that he was innocent. "At any rate," said he to
himself, "this examination will settle it."

In due time the examination day came, and once more the three rivals
heard thei