tigate his own punishment.

It is doubtful whether this system, though I believe it is found
successful in Continental colleges, can be usefully applied to English
boys; whether it may not produce a habit of mutual distrust and
suspicion, and a tone the reverse of healthy.

For myself, I am inclined to think that a schoolmaster will find it
better in the long run, for both the character and morals of his school,
if he is not too anxious to play the detective, and refrains from
encouraging the more weak-minded or cowardly boys to save themselves by
turning "schoolmaster's evidence."

Dr. Grimstone thought otherwise; but it must be allowed that the system,
as in vogue at Crichton House, did not work well.

There were boys, of course, who took a sturdier view of their own rights
and duties, and despised the talebearers as they deserved; there were
others, also, too timid and too dependent on the good opinion of others
to risk the loss of it by becoming informers; but there were always one
or two whose consciences were unequal to the burden of their neighbour's
sin, and could only be relieved by frank and full confession.

Unhappily they had, as a general rule, contributed largely to the sum
of guilt themselves, and did not resort to disclosure until detection
seemed reasonably imminent.

Chawner was the leader of this conscientious band; he revelled in the
system. It gave him the means at once of gratifying the almost universal
love of power and of indulging a catlike passion for playing with the
feelings of others, which, it is to be hoped, is more uncommon.

He knew he was not popular, but he could procure most of the incidents
of popularity; he could have his little court of cringing toadies; he
could levy his tribute of conciliatory presents, and vent many private
spites and hatreds into the bargain--and he generally did.

Having himself a tendency to acts of sly disobedience, he found it a
congenial pastime to set the fashion from time to time in some one of
the peccadilloes to which boyhood is prone, and to which the Doctor's
somewhat restrictive code added a large number, and as soon as he saw a
sufficient number of his companions satisfactorily implicated, his
opportunity came.

He would take the chief culprits aside, and profess, in strict
confidence, certain qualms of conscience which he feared could only be
appeased by unburdening his guilt-laden soul.

To this none would have had any right to object-