This thought had made him severe to John, though not so severe as his father: and more open to conviction. His mind was at all times more open to conviction than that of his father: and when John had burst out of the office, in the first rage of his indignation, refusing to defend himself, Mr. William, as has been said, followed him to the door, calling him back, with a compunction which he could not get rid of. This compunction did nothing but go on increasing in the blank which followed that fiery scene. And the atmosphere in the pupil’s room affected Mr. William, too, though he was not aware of it. He had a consciousness that the lads were saying among themselves, in the slang of which all elder persons disapprove, that the bosses had made a thundering mistake. Had they made a mistake? He was, in his heart, of the same opinion as the pupil-room. He did not think that John Sandford had done this thing. Now that the flurry of discovery was over, he asked himself was it likely? had the young fellow ever done anything that looked the least like it? Had he not always been as steady as a rock, always honest and true, never neglecting his employers’ interests, carrying out their orders, as good a worker as could be? Was it likely he should turn round all at once? This thought worked in his mind silently, while those boys entertained each other with saying that the bosses had made a mistake: and it was greatly stimulated by the exasperating suggestion that Spender & Diggs might reap all the profit, and might go far ahead of Barretts in the struggle for fortune and fame. Would they go ahead of Barretts? He began to remember John’s start of surprise, his question as to who it was that had carried his papers to the other office, his look of enlightenment. If they had been stolen from him, and the papers which he had flung down on the table, were, as he had said, his original scheme, Spender & Diggs might not find it so easy to shoot ahead of Barretts. On the whole, thinking it over, it was more likely that Spender & Diggs had cheated than John. It would not be the first time. They might have put one of their men up to it, to find out what the young fellow was working at. Of course it soon got abroad among the lads what one was doing--and what more likely than that the rival firm, old hands at that sort of thing, people far more used to picking the brains of other people’s pupils than to developing talent among their own, what if they had secured possession of the copy of John’s scheme by one of the underhand ways with which they were familiar? On the whole, that was really more likely than that Sandford, a lad against whom nobody had a word to say, who had always behaved well, should have gone over, without rhyme or reason, to the enemy.