han he could bring himself to, to summon the house and
announce the news publicly. If Dangle and Brinkman had been with him
still, the three of them together might have brazened it out. But his
colleagues were sulking in their own quarters, and whatever had to be
done must be done singlehanded.

He therefore sat down in no very happy frame of mind and wrote out the
following curt notice for the house-boards.--

"Notice.

"The head-master wishes it to be known that the Club money supposed to
be missing has been found by the treasurer.

"Geo. Clapperton."

This ungracious document he copied out three times, and taking advantage
of every one being in his study for preparation, affixed with his own
hand on the notice boards at the house-door and on each landing.

"There!" said he, with a sneer of disgust, as he returned to his own
room, "let them make the most of that."

An hour later the dormitory bell sounded, and he could hear the
scuffling of feet on the lobby outside, and the clamour of voices as
boys hustled one another in front of the boards. Evidently the majority
regarded the announcement in a jocular manner; and when a distant shout
of laughter came up from the passage below, and down from the landing
above, it was clear that Forders did not take the matter very much to
heart.

"It was ridiculous, when you come to think of it," soliloquised
Clapperton, "that a blundering ass like Fisher major should have brought
the School into such a precious mess."

The noise gradually died away as fellows one by one dropped of to bed.

Clapperton waited till they were gone before he followed. As he passed
the notice board he glanced at the document which had lately cost him so
much pain. It was still there; but not as he left it. A sentence had
been squeezed in between his own words and his signature at the bottom
of the sheet, which, as it was a fair imitation of his back-sloped
handwriting, had all the appearance of forming part of his manifesto.
Clapperton gasped with fury as he read the amended notice:--

"Notice.

"The head-master wishes it to be known that, the Club money supposed to
be missing has been found by the treasurer, and that I am a beast and a
sneak to have accused Rollitt of stealing it.

"Geo. Clapperton."

He tore the paper from the board, and stamped on it in his rage. Then
he went downstairs to look at the notice on the school-door. It read
precisely like the other, the imitatio