Semphill and Carvale looked up, and then down. Sterling looked down, down. Van Kristen looked up. The others, anywhere. Talacryn looked annoyed. The taunt was flung out; and the flying voice went-on. "The _Catholic Hour_ thus casts its diatribe in a key of depreciation. Next, I am said to have gone to a school for outcasts, to have quarrelled with the two priest-chaplains; and presently to have been 'again out.' The idea being to infer evil, it is rather cleverly done in that statement of the case. But here are the facts. The school perhaps might be called a school for outcasts. But I, a young inexperienced Catholic of six months, was lured by innumerable false pretences, on the part of the eccentric party who offered me the post, to accept what he called the Head-mastership of a Cathedral Choir School. He did not tell me that he was forcing the establishment on the bishop of the diocese, nor that the Head-mastership had been refused by several distinguished priests simply on account of the impossible conditions. I bought my experience. That I quarrelled with the chaplains is quite true. I did not quarrel effectually though. They were a Belgian and a Frenchman. They drank themselves drunk on beer, out of decanters, chased each other round the refectory tables in a tipsy fight, defied my authority and compelled the ragamuffins of the school to do the same. I naturally resigned that post as quickly as possible. Then follows a pseudo-history of the beginning of my ecclesiastical career at Maryvale. Talacryn knows all about that; and can tell you at your leisure. Afterwards, I came across, (I am quoting), 'came across a certain Pictish lairdie, and was maintained by him for three or four months----'" "And I know all about that," Semphill interrupted: "You gave a great deal more than you got." "The fallacies connected with my career at and expulsion from St. Andrew's College are known?" "Thoroughly," assented Semphill, Talacryn, and Carvale in a breath. "The statement that I contracted large debts there----" "What about those debts?" Ragna asked. Carvale told him. "They all were contracted under the personal supervision of the Vice-Rector. They were quite insignificant. Besides that, they would not have been contracted but for the promise of Archbishop Smithson and the advice of Canon Dugdale----" "And the advice of me," Semphill added in a low tone. "Oh, you at length acknowledge it?" George fiercely thrust at him. "Yes, I acknowledge it." "Well then, we're quits now:" George quietly and mysteriously mewed. "One confesses that the question of the pseudonym interests one," Sterling judicially said. "I had half-a-dozen. You see when I was kicked out from college, without a farthing or a friend at hand, I literally became an adventurer. Thank God Who gave me the pluck to face my adventures. I was obliged to live by my wits. Thank God again Who gave me wits to live by."