“No, they would not kill it,” he answered. “Anyway, to-morrow, after the Doctor’s class is over, and everybody has gone, I shall stop and make a clean breast of it, and ask him, for the sake of humanity, to have the bookshelf moved. But it’s all up with me if the rat has lost its feeling towards me and won’t come back; only if it was stuck and couldn’t come back, that’s different.” He didn’t sleep much that night, but he said some prayers, which was a thing he didn’t often do; and of course he was praying that the piebald rat might be allowed to return. But next day, after the Scripture class, in which Ferrars was not nearly so much to the front as usual, and got regularly muddled over a potty question about Jacob, the Doctor saved him the trouble of asking about his rat. He--the Doctor, I mean--had been jolly glum all through class, and when it was ended he did a rum thing, which was awful to see, knowing all we did. He told us to keep our places, then went to the fireplace and picked up the shovel. From the face of it he removed a bit of newspaper, and under the newspaper was “Mayne Reid.” His pink eyes had gone foggy, and there was a little streak of blood on his mouth. Otherwise his body looked all right. “Now here,” said the Doctor, in an awfully solemn way, “we have a dead, piebald rat. There can be no outlet for error concerning such a rat as this. To have seen such a rat is to remember it. Already three classes have been before me to-day, but nobody knew anything about this animal. That it was a tame rat its fatness and sleekness testify. Moreover, the piebald rat is an outcome of artificiality. A wild rat in a state of nature is brown or black, as the case may be. This rat, then, had an owner, and that owner brought it into my study--_my study!_--and suffered it to escape here. That I do well to be angry you will the more easily understand when I tell you that the unsavory creature was upon my desk last night, and has scratched and even eaten some papers whereon were notes for my next sermon. It was discovered this morning by one of the domestics. She, seeing some object moving upon my desk, struck with the broom-handle, and destroyed this rat. Now let there be no prevarication or evasion of the questions I am going to put to you. First, I wish to know if this rat belongs, or rather belonged, to any among you; and, secondly, I desire to learn whether, supposing the rat be not the property of any present, you happen to know whose property it is, or rather was?” I stole a look at Ferrars, and he appeared so frightful to see, that for some reason I thought I’d try and help him. So, like a fool, I was just going to speak when young Corkey minimus did. He said: “Please, sir, it might be a foreign sort of rat that came over in that box of pineapples and things that Ashby major had sent him from the West Indies.”