Next morning Walter was reconducted to the private room, and there, with a kind of dull pain in head and heart, awaited the sentence which was to decide his fate. His fancy had left Saint Winifred's altogether; it was solely occupied with Semlyn, and the dear society at home. Walter was rehearsing again and again in his mind the scene of his return; what he should say to his father; how he should dry his mother's tears; and how he should bear himself, on his return, towards his little brothers and sisters. Would he, expelled from Saint Winifred's, ever be able to look anyone in the face again at home? While he was brooding over these fancies, someone, breathless with haste, ran up to his room, and again a note was thrust underneath the door. He seized it quickly, and read-- "Dear Walter,--I am so glad to be the first to tell you that you are not to be expelled. Paton has begged you off. No time for more. I have slipped away before morning school to leave you this news, and can't stay lest I should be caught. Good-bye, from your ever affectionate friend, "H.K." The boy's heart gave one bound of joy as he read this. If he were not expelled he was ready to bear meekly any other punishment appointed to his offence. But his banishment from the school would cause deep affliction to others besides himself, and this was why he had dreaded it with such a feeling of despair. Alone as he was in the little room, he fell on his knees, and heartily and humbly thanked God for this answer to his earnest, passionate, reiterated prayer; and then he read Kenrick's note again. "Paton has begged you off." He repeated this sentence over and over again, aloud and to himself, and seemed as if he could never realise it. Paton--Paton, the very man whom he had so deeply and irreparably injured--had begged him off, and shielded him from a punishment which no one could have considered too severe for his fault. Young and inexperienced as Walter Evson was, he could not, of course, fully understand and appreciate the _amount_ of the loss, the nature and degree of the injury which he had inflicted; but yet, he _could_ understand that he had done something which caused greater pain to his master than even the breaking of a limb, or falling ill of a severe sickness. And he never prayed for himself without praying also that Mr Paton's misfortune might in some way be alleviated; and even, impossible as the prayer might seem, that he, Walter, might himself have some share in rendering it more endurable.