"The little, graceless, abominable wretch!" exclaimed Mr Percival with anger, "he must be expelled. But can't you recommence the task?" "Recommence?" said Mr Paton, in a hard voice; "and who will give me back the hope and vigour of the last fifteen years? how shall I have the heart again to toil through the same long trains of research and thought? where are the hundreds of references which I had sought out and verified with hours of heavy midnight labour? how am I to have access again to the scores of books which I consulted before I began to work? The very thought of it sickens me. Youth and hope are over. No, Percival, there is no more to be said. I am robbed of a life's work. Leave me, please, alone for a little, until I have learnt to say less bitterly, `God's will be done.'" "`He needeth not Either man's work or his own gifts; who best Bear his mild yoke they please him best,'" said Mr Percival, in a tone of kind and deep sympathy, as he left him to return to the schoolroom. But once in sight of Mr Paton's open and rifled desk, Mr Percival's pent-up indignation burst forth into clear flame. Stopping in front of Mr Paton's form, he exclaimed, in a voice that rang with scorn and sorrow-- "You boys do not know the immense mischief which your thoughtless and worthless spite and folly have caused. I say `boys,' but I believe, and rejoice to believe, that one only of you is guilty, and I rejoice too, that _that_ one is a new boy, who must have brought here feelings and passions more worthy of an ignorant and ill-trained plough-boy than of a Saint Winifred's scholar. The hand that would burn a valuable manuscript would fire a rick of hay." "O sir," said Henderson, starting up and interrupting him, "we were all very nearly as bad. It was the rest of us that burnt the imposition-book; Evson had nothing to do with that." Henderson had forgotten for the moment that he at least had had no share in burning the imposition-book, for his warm quick heart could not bear that these blows should fall unbroken on his friend's head.