Mr. Brandiston lighted his candle again and went as rapidly as he could to Pomfret’s room. The school clock struck one o’clock as he entered it. Pomfret, too, was asleep. Sleep looks awful when it is associated with the suspicion of guilt. Mr. Brandiston glanced at the table; there, half hidden by a lexicon, was Pomfret’s paper with his name, G. Pomfret, written upon it, and his ink-marks against the questions which he had been unable to answer. Mr. Brandiston retired to bed, but he hardly slept that night. Mr. Brandiston’s mind was made up. Unless Eversley could offer some explanation of the finding of the fragment of paper in the fireplace of his room--and what explanation could be satisfactory?--there could be no doubt that he had been guilty of fraud. Mr. Brandiston, as he lay wakeful in his bed, felt that his proper course of action was unmistakable. It was to send for Gerald Eversley next morning, lay before him the evidence which appeared to justify the most serious suspicion against him, and, in the event of his being unable to meet it, to report him formally to the head master. Mr. Brandiston would be just--that was certain; but justice demanded the exposure and punishment of the guilty boy. The interview with Gerald Eversley next morning was not calculated to set Mr. Brandiston’s suspicion at rest. It is true that Gerald Eversley throughout asserted his innocence. But his manner was confused; it was not, Mr. Brandiston thought, the manner of an innocent boy. He admitted at once that the paper found in his fireplace had not been borrowed from Pomfret or any other boy. He professed himself totally unable to explain how it came to be in his fireplace. Mr. Brandiston thought it best not to tell him who had found it there; but he assured him that there was no doubt as to its having been found. He concluded by saying that the facts which he had collected and weighed with scrupulous care, pointed, in his opinion, irresistibly to one conclusion--that the paper must have been stolen from a drawer in his study; that only two boys in the house, of whom Gerald was one, could have been interested in stealing it; that Gerald had been seen to enter his study at a time when it might have been stolen; that a charred fragment of the paper had been found in his room, and that he could give no account of its being found there. In the circumstances, Mr. Brandiston, after consideration, felt that he could not do otherwise than report Gerald Eversley to the head master for dishonesty.