defence, and
may go." As Bruce seemed determined to plead his own cause, they
ordered the attendant to remove him immediately.

Kennedy was then sent for, and they could not help pitying him, for he
was a favourite with them all.

"Mr Kennedy," said the senior Dean, "the Master desires me to admonish
you for your very culpable connivance--for I have no other name for it--
in the great folly and wickedness of which Bruce has been convicted--"

"I did _not_ connive," said Kennedy.

"Silence, sir!"

"But I will _not_ keep silence; you accuse me falsely."

"We shall be obliged to take further measures, Mr Kennedy, if you
behave in this refractory way."

"I don't care what measures you take. I cannot listen in silence to an
accusation which I loathe--of a crime of which I am wholly innocent."

"Why, sir, you confessed that you suspected some unfair design."

"But not this design. Proceed, sir; I will not interrupt you again; but
let me say that I am totally indifferent to any blame which you throw on
me for a brutality of which the whole responsibility rests on others."

The thread of the Dean's oration was quite broken by Kennedy's impetuous
interruption, and he merely added--"Well, Mr Kennedy, I am sorry to see
you so little penitent for the position in which you have placed
yourself. You have disappointed the expectation of all your friends,
and however you may brazen it out, your character has contracted a
stain."

"You can say so, sir, if you choose," said Kennedy; and he left the room
with a formal bow.

A few days after, Mr Grayson asked him to what Bruce had alluded in his
insinuation about an examination-paper.

"He alludes, sir, to an event which happened some time ago."

Further questions were useless; nevertheless Kennedy saw that his
tutor's suspicions were not only aroused, but that they had taken the
true direction. Mr Grayson despised him, and in Saint Werner's he had
lost caste.

That evening Bruce vanished from Camford, with the regrets of few except
his tailors and his duns. To this day he has not paid his college debts
or discharged the bill for the gorgeous furniture of his rooms. But we
shall hear of him again.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.

DE VAYNE'S CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS.

"He that for love hath undergone
The worst that can befall,
Is happier thousandfold than one
Who never loved at all.

"A grace within his soul hath reigned,
Which nothing else can bring;
Th