A grey dusky morning, enveloped in fog, succeeded to the fine night. Before seven o’clock—so watchful and alert are boys when mischief is afloat—most of those who had been in the conspiracy were assembled, and waiting round the schoolroom doors. Generally, they could tear up at the twelfth moment. They would not have missed the sight of Charles Channing’s arrival for half-a-crown apiece, so curious were they to see how he looked, after his fright. As it happened, it was not at any of their homes that inquiries had been made the previous night; not one of them was, to say, intimate with Charley: they were most of them older than he. Consequently, they knew nothing of the search. Tod Yorke, who did know of it, had not yet arrived. Of all the king’s scholars, none were marked late more frequently than Master Tod.

The senior boy had gone to the head-master’s for the keys as usual, and now came down the cloisters, clanking them in his hand.

“Has Charles Channing turned up?” he called out, before he was well abreast of them.

Pierce senior choked away his inclination to laughter, which the sound of the name excited, and saucy Bywater answered. “Where should he turn up from, Huntley? Has he been swallowed?”

“Hamish Channing came to our house last night, ages after I was in bed, saying they couldn’t find him,” replied Huntley. “What was in the wind last night with old Calcraft?”

The boys looked at him demurely; and Huntley, receiving no reply, unlocked the schoolroom and entered it. They remained behind, winking at each other, and waiting still for Charles. It wanted yet a few minutes to seven.

“I say, what d’ye think?” whispered Bywater. “After I had got our sheet smuggled in, all right, and was putting it on the bed, I found two big holes burnt in it. Won’t there be a commotion when my old aunt finds it out! She’ll vow I have been reading in bed. That was you, Pierce senior!”

“I’m sure I never burnt it,” retorted Pierce. “It was the flame did it, if anything.”

“Here comes Bill Simms!” exclaimed Bywater, when their smothered laugh was over. “What has he been doing to himself? He’s as white as the ghost!”

Mr. Bill Simms assuredly did look white. He had a pale face at the best of times, and it was embellished with straw-coloured hair. But at the present moment it had turned ghastly, and his frame seemed shaking as he came along.

“What on earth has taken you, Simms?” demanded Hurst.

“Oh, goodness!” uttered Simms. “I wish I was well out of this! They are saying there’s a college boy drowned!”

“What?” cried the boys, gathering round him.

“There was a crowd down by the boat-house as I came along,” responded Simms, as well as he could speak for his chattering teeth. “I asked a fellow what it was, and he said he didn’t rightly know, but he thought one of the college boys had been found drowned in the water.”

Some of the gentlemen-listeners’ faces turned as pale as Mr. Bill Simms’s; as pale as each conscience. Bywater was the first to gather courage.

“It’s not obliged to be Charley Channing, if there is any one drowned.”

“But it’s sure to be him,” chattered Simms, his teeth as crazy as his grammar. “Griffin junior says Arthur Channing went to their house last night at twelve, and said they couldn’t find Charley.”

The consternation into which this news plunged the guilty ones is not easily described. A conviction that it was Charles Channing who was drowned, overtook them all. Schoolboys are not quite without hearts, and they would have given all they possessed, in that moment, to see Charles come flying amongst them, as usual. Some of them began to wish they were without necks; for if Charles had come to an untimely end through their work, they might stand a chance of furnishing employment to the veritable Mr. Calcraft, on their own score. Tod Yorke came leaping up in delight.

“Oh, wasn’t it good! The young one—”

“Hold your noise, Tod! They are saying he’s dead.”

“Who’s dead?” wondered Tod.

“Charley Channing. A college boy was found in the river, drowned.”

“Oh, that be hanged!” exclaimed Tod, half in mocking disbelief, half in awful fear. “It can’t be, you know. Who says it?”

“There’s seven! We must go in, or Huntley will be on to us. Mind!” added Pierce senior, for he was the speaker, “we must all keep each other’s counsel, and be in one tale—that we know nothing at all about it.”

They slunk into school. But that the senior boy was occupied with his new duty—the calling over of the roll—he might have observed that something was wrong. To play up a bit of mischief is the legitimate privilege of college boys; but to have led to a companion’s death is a terror-striking affair; and their countenances betrayed that it was so.

Before the roll was finished, the head-master was in school. Tom Channing—it was late for him—entered afterwards. The master beckoned to him.

“Is Charles found?”

“No, sir. We cannot learn any tidings of him at all. We have not been to bed, any of us; and the police are searching also.”

Had Tom Channing come from the other side of the Boundaries, near the boat-house, perhaps he might have been able to give a different account.

The master made no comment then. He motioned Tom to his desk, and gave the word for prayers. As the boys were rising from their knees, Hamish Channing entered the school, attended by Mr. Ketch.

Hamish approached the master, who shook hands with him. Ketch remained snarling and grinning defiance at the door, shaking his fist and his old teeth covertly at the boys. If looks could have blown up a room, the college school had certainly gone aloft then.

“I hear you have not found the boy?” said the master to Hamish. “It is very singular.”

“We have not found him. Mr. Pye,” continued Hamish, gravely, “I come to demand of your courtesy an immediate investigation into the doings of the college boys last night. That the disappearance of Charles is in some measure connected with it, we cannot do otherwise than believe. I have brought Ketch with me that he may tell his own tale.”

Ketch was marshalled forward and ordered to tell his tale, and the business of the school was suspended. Ketch told it distinctly enough; but he could not forbear enlarging upon his cruel disappointment over the tripe and onions, and it sent the school into convulsions. In the midst of it, Tom Channing breathed freely; Ketch’s preferring the complaint, did away with the unpleasantness he had feared might arise, through having been forced to disclose it to the master.

“I should be sorry to have displeasure visited upon the boys,” resumed Hamish. “Indeed, I should esteem it a favour, sir, if you will not punish them for any disclosure that may arise through this step which I have taken. I dare say,” he added, turning his laughing gaze upon them, “that I should have been one of the ringleaders myself, in my school days, therefore it would not be fair for me to bring punishment upon them. I only wish to know which of the school were in it, that I may make inquiries of them whether Charles was one of them or not; and, if he was, what they know of his movements afterwards.”

The address was fair and candid; so was Hamish’s face; and some of the conspirators, in their good feeling, might have freely confessed, but for the something just whispered to them by Simms. That closed their lips.

“Do you hear?” said the master, speaking sharply, for he had rather, ten times over, that the school frankly avowed mischief, when brought to book: he was never half so severe if they were so. “Why are you silent?”

Bill Simms, who had the bump of conscientiousness largely developed, with a wholesome dread of consequences, besides being grievously timid, felt that he could not hold out long. “Oh, murder!” he groaned to Mark Galloway, next to whom he sat: “let’s tell, and have done with it.”

Mark turned cold with fear. “You’re a pretty fellow!” he uttered, giving him a tremendous kick on the shins. “Would you like us all to be tried for our lives?” A suggestion which made matters worse; and Bill Simms’s hair began to stand on end.

“Huntley, have............