This candid admission on the part of the ingenious poet was too much for the gravity of one or two of the Fifth. Wraysford, however, was in no laughing mood, and went off to his study in great perturbation. He could not for a moment believe that his friend could be guilty of such a dishonourable act as stealing an examination paper, and his impulse was to go at once to Oliver's study and get the suspicions of the Fifth laid there and then. But the fear of seeming in the least degree to join in those suspicions kept him back. He tried to laugh the thing to scorn inwardly, and called himself a villain and a traitor twenty times for admitting even the shadow of a doubt into his own mind. Yet, as Wraysford sat that afternoon and brooded over his friend's new trouble, he became more and more uncomfortable. When on a former occasion the fellows had called in question Oliver's courage, he had felt so sure, so very sure the suspicion was a groundless one, that he had never taken it seriously to heart. But somehow this affair was quite different. What possible object would Simon, for instance, have for telling a deliberate lie? and if it had been a lie, why should Oliver have betrayed such confusion on hearing it? These were questions which, try all he would, Wraysford could not get out of his mind. When Stephen presently came in, cheery as ever, and eager to hear how the examination had gone off, the elder boy felt an awkwardness in talking to him which he had never experienced before. As for Stephen, he put down the short, embarrassed answers he received to Wraysford's own uneasiness as to the result of the examination. Little guessed the boy what was passing in the other's mind! There was just one hope Wraysford clung to. That was that Oliver should come out anywhere but first in the result. If Loman, or Wraysford himself, were to win, no one would be able to say his friend had profited by a dishonourable act; indeed, it would be as good as proof he had not taken the paper. And yet Wraysford felt quite sick as he called to mind the unflagging manner in which Oliver had worked at his paper that morning, covering sheet upon sheet with his answers, and scarcely drawing in until time was up. It didn't look like losing, this. He threw himself back in his chair in sheer misery. "I would sooner have done the thing myself," groaned he to himself, "than Oliver." Then suddenly he added, "But it's not true! I'm certain of it! He couldn't do it! I'll never believe it of him!" Poor Wraysford! It was easier to say the generous words than feel them. Pembury looked in presently with a face far more serious and overcast than he usually wore. "I say, Wray," said he, in troubled tones, "I'm regularly floored by all this. Do you believe it?" "No, I don't," replied Wraysford, but so sadly and hesitatingly that had he at once confessed he did, he could not have expressed his meaning more plainly.