“We have not found him. Mr. Pye,” continued Hamish, gravely, “I come to demand of your courtesy an immediate investigation into the doings of the college boys last night. That the disappearance of Charles is in some measure connected with it, we cannot do otherwise than believe. I have brought Ketch with me that he may tell his own tale.” Ketch was marshalled forward and ordered to tell his tale, and the business of the school was suspended. Ketch told it distinctly enough; but he could not forbear enlarging upon his cruel disappointment over the tripe and onions, and it sent the school into convulsions. In the midst of it, Tom Channing breathed freely; Ketch’s preferring the complaint, did away with the unpleasantness he had feared might arise, through having been forced to disclose it to the master. “I should be sorry to have displeasure visited upon the boys,” resumed Hamish. “Indeed, I should esteem it a favour, sir, if you will not punish them for any disclosure that may arise through this step which I have taken. I dare say,” he added, turning his laughing gaze upon them, “that I should have been one of the ringleaders myself, in my school days, therefore it would not be fair for me to bring punishment upon them. I only wish to know which of the school were in it, that I may make inquiries of them whether Charles was one of them or not; and, if he was, what they know of his movements afterwards.” The address was fair and candid; so was Hamish’s face; and some of the conspirators, in their good feeling, might have freely confessed, but for the something just whispered to them by Simms. That closed their lips. “Do you hear?” said the master, speaking sharply, for he had rather, ten times over, that the school frankly avowed mischief, when brought to book: he was never half so severe if they were so. “Why are you silent?” Bill Simms, who had the bump of conscientiousness largely developed, with a wholesome dread of consequences, besides being grievously timid, felt that he could not hold out long. “Oh, murder!” he groaned to Mark Galloway, next to whom he sat: “let’s tell, and have done with it.” Mark turned cold with fear. “You’re a pretty fellow!” he uttered, giving him a tremendous kick on the shins. “Would you like us all to be tried for our lives?” A suggestion which made matters worse; and Bill Simms’s hair began to stand on end. “Huntley, have you any cognizance of this?” demanded Mr. Pye. “None, sir.” And so said the three seniors under him. “Boys!” said the master, bringing his cane down upon the desk in a manner he was accustomed to do when provoked: “I _will_ come to the bottom of this business. That several of you were in it, I feel sure. Is there not _one_ of you sufficiently honest to speak, when required so to do?” Certain of the boys drooped their conscious faces and their eyelids. As to Bill Simms, he felt ready to faint.