“What have you done with Charles Channing?” thundered the master. “Where have you put him? Where is he gone? I command you to speak! Let the senior of those who were in it speak! or the consequences be upon your own heads.” The threat sounded ominous in the ears of Bill Simms: he saw himself, in prospective, exposed to all the horrors of a dungeon, and to something worse. With a curious noise, something between a bark and a groan, he flung himself with his face on the floor, and lay there howling. “Mr. Simms,” said the master, “what has taken you? Were you the chief actor in this matter?” All considerations had disappeared from Mr. Simms’s mind except the moment’s terror. He forgot what would be his own position in the school, if he told, or--as they would have expressed it--turned sneak. Impelled by fear, he was hardly conscious of his words; hardly responsible for them. “It wasn’t me,” he howled. “They all know I didn’t want the trick played upon him. I told them that it had killed a boy down by our farm, and it might kill Channing. They know I told them.” The master paused. “Walk here, Simms.” Simms picked himself up from the ground and walked there. A miserable object he looked; his eyes red, his teeth chattering, his face white, and his straw-coloured hair standing on end. The master leaned his arms upon his desk, and brought his face almost into contact with the frightened one. “What trick did you play upon Charles Channing?” “‘Twasn’t me, sir,” sobbed Simms. “I didn’t want it done, I say, O-o-o-o-o-o-h! I didn’t!” “What trick was played upon him?” “It was a ghost dressed up to frighten him, and he passed through the cloisters and saw it. It wasn’t me! I’ll never speak another word, if it was me!” “A ghost!” repeated the master in astonishment, while Ketch stretched his old neck forward, and the most intense interest was displayed by the school. “They did it with a sheet and a blue flame,” went on Simms; who, now that the ice was broken, tried to make a clean breast of it, and grew more alarmed every moment. “It wasn’t me! I didn’t want it done, and I never lent a hand to the dressing up. If little Channing is dead, it won’t be fair to hang me.” “Who was in the plot?” was the next question of the master. And Simms enumerated them. The master, stern and grim, beckoned to the several gentlemen to walk up, and to range themselves before him. “The lad has run some distance in his terror,” observed the master aside to Hamish, as he remembered what Judith had told him the previous night. “You will see him home in the course of the day.” “I trust we may!” replied Hamish, with marked emphasis. Bit by bit, word by word, the master drew the whole truth from the downcast lads. Pierce senior looked dogged and obstinate: he was inwardly vowing unheard-of revenge against Mr. Simms. Probably most of them were doing the same.