her."

"You'll have enough to do, sir, if you believe all our young gents tell
you; why, master would as soon think of flying as of stealing anything.
It was Mr. Coleman as put them up the chimbley; he's always a playing
some trick or another for everlasting."

A pause ensued, during which the whole affair in its true bearings
became for the first time clear to my mind's eye; the result of my
cogitations may be gathered from the following remark, which escaped me
as it were involuntarily--"What a confounded ass I have made of myself,
_to be sure_!"

Should any of my readers be rude enough to agree with me in this
particular, let them reflect for a moment on the peculiar position
in which I was placed. Having lived from childhood in a quiet country
parsonage, with my father and mother, and a sister younger than myself,
as my sole companions, "mystification"--that is, telling deliberate
falsehoods by way of a joke--was a perfectly novel idea to me; and,
when that joke involved the possibility of such serious consequences as
offending the tutor under whose care we were placed, I (wholly ignorant
of the impudence and recklessness of public school boys) considered such
a solution of the mystery inconceivable. Moreover, everything around me
was so strange, and so entirely ~20~~different from the habits of life
in which I had been hitherto brought up, that for the time my mind was
completely bewildered. I appeared to have lost my powers of judgment,
and to have relapsed, as far as intellect was concerned, into childhood
again. My readers must excuse this digression, but it appeared to me
necessary to explain how it was possible for a lad of fifteen to have
been made the victim of such a palpably absurd deception without its
involving the necessity of his not being "so sharp as he should be".

The promised "something warm" made its appearance ere long, in the shape
of tea and toast, which, despite my alarming seizure, I demolished with
great gusto in bed (for I did not dare to get up), feeling, from the
fact of my having obtained it under false pretences, very like a culprit
all the while. Having finished my breakfast, and allowed sufficient time
to elapse for my recovery, I got up, and, selecting a pair of trousers
which appeared to have suffered less from their sojourn in the chimney
than the others, dressed myself, and soon after eleven o'clock made my
appearance in the pupils' room, where I found Dr. Mildman seated at hi