It was only a funeral of a drowned man who had been picked up the previous night upon the shore of Wilton. But the dark, slow-moving figures of the bearers, and the flickering gleam of the lanthorns, made dim by the moonshine, froze his heart with terror, and drove him away from his mother's grave without one word of parting. Perhaps it was better so. It saved him the difficulty and sorrow of having to decide to say good-bye for ever to that grassy sleeping-place where slept the one so dear to him. Away he ran, heedless, frightened, through the straggling remainder of the village. Not a light was burning, not a person stirring, which was fortunate, though he never paused to see; or think, but hastened on till he fancied he had gone miles; and then, seeing an inviting barn close by the roadside, turned in, and, worn out with fatigue and excitement, soon slept heavily in a low, broken manger full of hay--a strange but welcome bed. CHAPTER XV. THE BITERS BIT. Excitement in school--Expecting a row--The doctor speaks--Deliberate falsehood--The truth comes out--The two culprits--Manly confession--Mr Franklyn speaks--Honest shame--Egerton convicted--The doctor's speech--Warburton caned--Egerton birched--Justification. The bright fresh summer hour of seven, the following morning, was very different in the barn where Harry had taken up his abode to what it was at the grammar-school. In the former, it saw the tired lonely boy sleeping heavily, his face stained with tears; in the latter, a great stir and confusion. Campbell had run away. The search in the night had been fruitless; and to add to the general excitement, that morning the Examiner was to commence the _viva voce_ part of the examination. The hour of preparation, from seven to eight, was not a very industrious one. Boys were too full of surmises, and Mr Prichard, who happened that morning to be in charge of the school-room, was too much disturbed about Harry's disappearance to pay much attention to the whispers which were spreading through the room. Breakfast, too, was by no means the usual ordinarily quiet meal. The only boys who betrayed any symptoms of nervousness or uneasiness (all were excited, of course) were those who had joined Egerton and Warburton in their assault on Harry the previous night. These looked guilty; but their ringleaders preserved the utmost coolness and indifference; and a casual observer, if asked, would have said, "Well, if there are two boys more than any others who certainly have nothing to do with the whole affair, those two are Egerton and Warburton." So much for guilt, and the mask it can so well assume.