Bickerton--or shall I call him Mercury, the messenger of the
gods?--went, and I remained. It was no matter to me what news he
brought back. I stood there, in the lions' den, and counted the
cracks in the ceiling. I counted, also, the number of corners that
the room possessed, and remembered how these same prefects had often
(as when gods disport themselves) tried to make Doe and me stand in
them for what they termed "unmitigated cheek"; how, giggling, we
would fight them and kick them till they surrounded us and held us
with our faces to the wall; and how we would call them all the rude
names we could think of till they stuffed handkerchiefs in our
mouths as a gag. One of their favourite pastimes had been to do
Doe's hair, which they darkened with their wet brushes. It was
usually a difficult business, as Doe would treat the whole operation
in a disorderly spirit and declare that it tickled.

Presently Bickerton was heard running up the corridor (rather
undignified for a prefect) and came bursting into the room.

"Now listen," said he, somewhat out of breath, and looking at a
sheet of paper which he held in his hand. "Two boys saw Ray get up
and leave the dormitory last night. They sleep on either side of
him, and their names are Pennybet and Doe. The latter isn't sure
whether he dreamt it."

"Well, Ray, what have you got to say to that?" asked Stanley.

"Nothing," I answered, "except that, if it's true, I must have been
walking in my sleep. I did once, when I was a small boy."

Stanley ignored my feeble defence. He submitted to his colleagues
that it was all his eye and Betty Martin; and the others nodded
assent. Then the Chairman, recovering from his slight relapse into
the vernacular of the Fourth Form, enunciated the following
remarkable sentence:

"This inquest has, you will agree, been conducted by me in a
strictly impartial and disinterested way, and the proceedings have
been conspicuous for the absence of any bias, prejudice, or
bigotry."

"Whew!" whistled several boys. Stanley let a grin hover in a
well-bred way about his lips as he recommenced, the sentence being
well-prepared and worth repeating:

"There has been no bias, prejudice, or bigotry. Well, gentlemen, is
the corpse guilty or not guilty?"

"Guilty, the little beast!"

I went out of that cruel room resolved that "beneath all the
bludgeonings of chance my head should be bloody but unbowed." I was
unconquerable! I walked along the corrido