s taken
_bona fide_."

"Don't tell me, sir," Captain Bayley exclaimed angrily. "What do I care
for evidence? Of course he told me a long rigmarole story, but he could
not have believed it himself. No one but a fool could believe my nephew
Frank guilty of theft; the idea is preposterous, it was as much as I
could do to restrain myself from caning him when he was speaking."

The lawyer smiled inwardly, for Dr. Litter was a tall, stately man, six
feet two in height, while Captain Bayley was a small, slight figure, by
no means powerful when in his prime, and now fully twenty years the
senior of the head-master.

"Well, Captain Bayley," he said, "in the first place it is necessary
that I should know the precise accusation which this gentleman has
brought against your nephew. Will you be good enough to repeat to me, as
nearly as you can, the statement which he made, as, of course, if we
proceed to legal measures, we must be exact in the matter?"

"Well, this is about the story he told me," Captain Bayley said, more
calmly. "In the first place, it seems that the lad broke bounds one
night, and went with a man named Perkins--who is a prize-fighter, and
who I know gave him lessons in boxing, for I gave Frank five pounds
last half to pay for them--to a meeting of these Chartist blackguards
somewhere in the New Cut.

"Well, there was a row there, as there naturally would be at such a
place, and it seems Frank knocked down some Radical fellow--a tailor, I
believe--and broke his nose. Well, you know, I am not saying this was
right; still, you know, lads will be lads, and I used to be fond of
getting into a row myself when I was young, for I could spar in those
days pretty well, I can tell you, Griffith. I would have given a
five-pound note to have seen Frank set to with that Radical tailor.
Still, I dare say, if the lad had told me about it I should have got
into a passion and blown him up."

"I shouldn't be surprised at all," the lawyer said drily.

"No. Well that would do him no harm; he knows me, and he knows that I am
peppery. Well, it seems this fellow found out who he was, and threatened
to report the thing to the head-master, in which case this Dr. Litter
said he should have expelled him for being out of bounds, a thing which
in itself I call monstrous. Now, here is where Frank was wrong. He ought
to have come straight to me and told me the whole affair, and got his
blowing-up and his money. Instead of that, he asked