shed, and stupidly forgot all about it until I came
to wind it up last night. Then it was too late to fetch it, and now
it's gone!"

"Look here !" cried Acton, glaring round the group with an unusually
ferocious look, "who knows anything about this? speak up, can't you!
We've had enough of this prigging business, and I'm sick of it!"

No one attempted to reply.

"Well," continued the dux, "I'm going straight off to old Welsby to tell
him, and I won't keep the key of that place. Of course it makes me look
as if I were the thief, and I won't stand it any longer."

The speaker turned on his heel and strode off in the direction of the
house.

"Oh, I say," muttered Jack Vance, "now there'll be a row!"

Jack's prophecy was soon fulfilled. The watch and chain could not be
found, and there was but little doubt that they had been stolen.
Mr. Welsby called the boys together, and though he spoke in a calm and
collected manner, with no trace of passion in his voice, yet his words
made them all tremble. Miss Eleanor sat silent at the tea-table, with a
shocked expression on her face; and Mr. Blake, when told of the
occurrence, said sharply, "Well, we'd better have locks put on
everything, and the sooner the better."

Acton produced his bunch of keys, and insisted that all his possessions
should be searched, and every one else followed his example. The whole
of the next afternoon was spent in a careful examination of desks and
boxes, but with no result beyond the discovery that Mugford owned a cord
waistcoat which he had 'never had the moral courage to wear.

There is one feature in the administration of justice by an English
court which is unhappily too often overlooked in the lynch law of
schoolboys, and that is the principle that a man shall be considered
innocent until he has been clearly proved guilty. Smarting under a
sense of shame which was entirely unmerited, every boy sought eagerly
for some object on which to vent his indignation; it became necessary,
to use the words of the comic opera, that "a victim should be found,"
and suspicion fell on Kennedy and Jacobs. The result of Diggory's trap
seemed to show that the various thefts had been committed at night.
It was agreed that the two occupants of the "Main-top" had special
opportunity for getting out of the house if so minded; every other room
had one or more fellows in it who had suffered the loss of some
property; and lastly, Kennedy was known to possess a