edn't cheer. I didn't mean to give it--but now I
have, I--I--won't shirk it," and he sat down hurriedly.

Then Dangle rose, with a sneer on his face.

"This sort of thing is infectious. I can't feel quite so sure as some
of you about burying the hatchet; but, not to be peculiar, you may put
me down--"

"And I can tell you at once, and before all these fellows," said Yorke,
rising hotly, and interrupting, "that we won't have you! And that
brings me to the other business--and that's about Rollitt. We can't
bury the hatchet so easily, as far as he is concerned. For he is still
absent, and no one knows what has become of him. I'm not going to say a
word to make little of Fisher's major's mistake. It was bad enough, in
all conscience, for Rollitt. But it was only a mistake. But what do
you fellows say of the cad who deliberately gets up a story about him;
and, even when he finds out there is not a shadow of truth in it,
repeats it in a worse form than before? There are some her who believed
the first report and joined in the suspicions. That was hardly to be
wondered at. But every one of them had the decency, as soon as the
money was found, to admit that they had been wrong, and to regret their
unfair suspicion of a Fellsgarth fellow. All but one--this cad here!
Only last night, you fellows, he wrote the letter I hold in my hand. I
mean to read it to you, and I hope you won't forget it in a hurry."

"You shan't read it; it wasn't to you!" said Dangle, making a rush at
the paper; "give it back!"

"You shall have it back," said Yorke in a warmer temper than any one had
seen him in before, "when I've read it. Stop, and listen _to it.
It'll_ do you good."

"Read away!" sneered Dangle, giving up the contest. "It's the truth."

Yorke read, and as he proceeded, shame and anger rose to boiling-point
in the audience, so that towards the end the reader's voice was almost
drowned in the hisses.

"There," said the captain, crumpling up the paper in his hand and
flinging it at the writer's feet, "there's your letter; and until you
apologise to the whole school you have insulted, you needn't expect
we'll bury the hatchet!"

Dangle scowled round and tried to swagger.

"Is that all the business?" he sneered.

"No!" shouted some voices. "He ought to be kicked."

"Wait a bit," cried Wally, excitedly, standing on a form, "there's
Rollitt's governor just come. Some of our chaps have gone to fetch him.
He'll--"