"The other affair had happened the day previously. He had gone into Barkley's room with his books on coming down from school at twelve o'clock, and seeing on his table a letter stamped and ready for the post, he supposed that as usual he was to post it, and was running downstairs with it in his hand when he met Barkley coming up. 'What have you got there?' he asked. 'I am taking your letter to the post,' he said; whereupon Barkley flew into another rage, called him an officious little beast, gave him a box in the ear, and took the letter from him. I asked the boy if he noticed to whom the letter was directed. He said he had, and that it was to you. Knowing nothing about the suppression of a letter of Norris's, and thinking that perhaps Barkley had written to his uncle about the matter, and had then changed his mind about posting it, this second affair did not strike me as having any importance whatever. The first matter, however, seemed important, for that just at the time when a letter was sent to Norris written in printing characters Barkley should have been seen writing a letter of that sort, struck me as most remarkable; and although I did not know exactly how the two lads stood in reference to yourself, it struck me at once that it was at least possible that we had been wrong, and that it was Barkley after all who took the note. "Had I suspected for an instant that he had done it to bring disgrace upon his cousin, I should at once have communicated with Dr. Litter, and have probed the affair from the bottom; but I thought that he had taken the note with the intention of helping his cousin out of his difficulty, and that when the note was traced, and the matter became public, he had in a base and cowardly manner allowed Frank to bear the blame. This would have been bad enough in all conscience, although comparatively venial to his deliberate attempt to bring disgrace upon Norris. "However, the matter seemed bad enough to me as it stood; but, as I said, I shrunk from causing the ruin of another young fellow unless it was necessary to clear Norris. I hesitated for a long time whether, knowing as much as I did, I ought not to take some steps in the matter; but for the reasons I have told you I determined to wait, hoping that you would soon have Norris back again, and knowing that I should hear of his return from some of the boys who were his special friends. Barkley must have seen from my manner that there was something wrong between him and me; but he never asked me the reason for the change in my manner to him, and completely ignored my coolness. It was a relief to me when the time came for his going up to the University, for I then felt that some of the responsibility was off my shoulders, and that I was no longer shirking my duty to expose him. "That is all, Captain Bayley; but I think that this, with what you have told me, is quite sufficient to bring the guilt home to the true party, and to completely clear Norris."