“When I desire your aid in the elucidation of this problem I will apply for it, Corkey minimus,” answered the Doctor, so Corkey dried up. Then, in a sort of voice that was strange to us, and seemed to come from his stomach or somewhere new, Ferrars spoke, and I never saw a chap look so ghastly. His eyes were fixed on the rat, and he came forward slowly. “Please, sir, it was my rat,” he said. “Yours, Ferrars! _You_ to disobey! You, of all boys, to set my orders at defiance!” “It wasn’t an ordinary rat, sir.” “I can see what sort of rat it was, sir, for myself,” thundered the Doctor. “This it is to consider a boy, to devote thought to him, to particularly commend him for his theological knowledge.” “I don’t take any credit for knowing anything now, sir. It was the rat as much as me.” “Robert Ferrars!” said the Doctor, in his caning voice, “you are now adding wicked buffoonery to an act in itself sufficiently disreputable!” “I can’t explain, sir; I don’t mean any buffoonery. That rat was more to me than you’d think. It--it _did_ help me somehow, and now it’s dead it wouldn’t be sportsmanlike to it to say not. And if you’ll let me b-bury it properly, I’ll be very thankful to you.” The Doctor looked at Ferrars awfully close during this speech. “Either you are lying,” he said, “or you suffer from some hysterical and neurotic condition, Robert Ferrars, which I have neither suspected nor discovered until this moment.” Then he told us to go; but Ferrars he kept for half an hour; and when Ferrars came in to dinner I saw he’d been blubbing. He explained to me after we’d gone to bed. He said: “No, he didn’t cane me or anything. He just talked, and told me a lot about several things I didn’t know, and said that familiar spirits were specially barred in the Bible. I never thought he’d have even tried to understand me; but he did, and he quite saw my side about the rat. He said kind words over it, too, and was sorry it was dead. And I’ve got to see Doctor Barnes to-morrow too, though, of course, it’s only having my rat on my mind that’s upset me. And he let me have it to b-bury gladly.” “Where shall you arrange the rat?” I said. “I’m sending it home in a stays-box that Jane gave me. I’ve written to my sister where to bury it. Jane it was who killed it. She cried like anything when I told her what ‘Mayne Reid’ was to me. But he’s in the book-post by now, beautifully done up in shavings and fresh geranium leaves. It’s no good talking any more. Only I will say that if he was a familiar spirit, he was a jolly good one, very different to the sort barred in the Scriptures. I don’t know how I’ll get on in the exams. now. I wish I was dead, too.” Then he sniffed a bit, and went to sleep. Browne, Bradwell, and Me