to be silent. Mr Bruce, had you any
designs against Lord De Vayne?"

"Designs, sir? Excuse me, but I am at a loss to understand your
meaning."

"You had no intention then of making him drunk?"

"Really, sir, you astonish me by such coarse imputations. Is it you,"
he said, turning angrily to Kennedy, "who have been saying such things
of me?"

Kennedy deigned no reply.

"I should think the testimony of a man who doesn't scruple secretly to
read examination-papers before they are set, ought not to stand for
much." Brogten, as we have already mentioned, had revealed to him the
secret of Kennedy's dishonour. This remark fell quite dead: Kennedy sat
unmoved, and Mr Norton replied--

"Pray don't introduce your personal altercations here, Mr Bruce, on
irrelevant topics. Mr Bruce," he continued, suddenly giving him the
label, "have you ever seen that before?"

With a cry of agony, Bruce saw the paper, and struck his forehead with
his hand. The sudden blow of shameful detection with all its train of
consequences utterly unmanned him, and falling on his knees, he cried
incoherently--

"Oh! I did it, I did it. I didn't mean to; my hand slipped: indeed,
indeed it did. For God's sake forgive me, and let this not be known. I
will give you thousands to hush it up--"

A general exclamation of indignation and disgust stopped his prayers,
and the Master gave orders that he should be removed and watched. He
was dragged away, tearing his hair and sobbing like a child. Kennedy,
too, was ordered to retire.

It took the Seniors but a short time to deliberate, and then Bruce was
summoned. He would have spoken, but the Master sternly ordered him to
be silent, and said to him:

"Vyvyan Bruce, you are convicted by your own confession, extorted after
deliberate falsehood, of having wished to drug the wine of a
fellow-student for the purpose of entrapping him into a sin, to which
you would otherwise have failed to tempt him. What fearful results may
follow from your wickedness we cannot yet know, and you may have to
answer for this crime before another tribunal. Be that as it may, it is
hardly necessary to tell you that your time as a student at Saint
Werner's has ended. You are expelled, and I now proceed to erase your
name from the books." (Here the Master ran his pen two or three times
through Bruce's signature in the college register). "Your rooms must be
finally vacated to-morrow. You need say nothing in self-