The term of the school was just closing, and worthy Mrs. K., who had several of the pupils as boarders in her family, being blessed with a rather large organ of caution, refused to allow one or two to leave (who did not expect to return the next term,) without depositing some collateral security for the payment of their board-bills. Those luckless youth had written again and again for the money necessary to settle their accounts in the place; but their entreaties were apparently unnoticed and unanswered. They were in the condition of Mr. Pecksniff's pupils, who were requested by their preceptor to ring the bell which was in their room, if they wanted anything. They often did so, but nobody ever answered it. It very naturally seemed almost incredible to Mrs. K. that the parents of her boarders should neglect to provide for the various expenses which arise at the close of a school term, especially as these pupils were not to return. So the good lady felt bound by her duty to herself to lay an embargo upon their trunks, and she further took occasion to observe that if there hadn't been so much horseback riding, &c., during the summer, her bill could have been settled. This of course provoked an angry retort, and suspicion smouldered on one side, and resentment flamed out on the other, until the whole mystery was unravelled. In another boarding-house, inhabited by pupils of both sexes, it had been customary for some of their number to get from the post-office the letters and papers sent to them, and this duty had lately devolved, for the most part, on one person, Henry S., who was a relation of the post master, and, from other circumstances, had frequent occasion to visit the office. As he returned almost empty-handed of letters from day to day, his disappointed fellow-boarders at first wondered at the silence of their friends, then suspicion began to work in their minds; and since the post master was a man of unsullied honor, and entirely reliable for honesty, they at length reluctantly admitted the supposition that Henry S. must be the delinquent. Acting on the ground that S. was the guilty one, his fellow-boarders gave orders to the post master, forbidding the delivery of their letters to him. So the next day, when he presented himself at the office, he was thunderstruck by the information that he had lost the confidence of his fellow-pupils, and that they would no longer trust their letters in his hands. "It can't be," exclaimed he, "that they suppose I took their letters." "I guess they do," said the old post master; "but I think they had better be sure that there were letters coming to them, before they suspect you." "Oh, now I see why they have acted so strangely, lately, just as if they didn't want me around. I never once thought that this was the reason of it."