nishment. Mr. Downing leaped in his chair. Mike's eyes opened to
their fullest extent.

"Adair!"

There was almost a wail in the headmaster's voice. The situation had
suddenly become too much for him. His brain was swimming. That Mike,
despite the evidence against him, should be innocent, was curious,
perhaps, but not particularly startling. But that Adair should inform
him, two minutes after Mr. Downing's announcement of Psmith's
confession, that Psmith, too, was guiltless, and that the real
criminal was Dunster--it was this that made him feel that somebody, in
the words of an American author, had played a mean trick on him, and
substituted for his brain a side-order of cauliflower. Why Dunster, of
all people? Dunster, who, he remembered dizzily, had left the school
at Christmas. And why, if Dunster had really painted the dog, had
Psmith asserted that he himself was the culprit? Why--why anything? He
concentrated his mind on Adair as the only person who could save him
from impending brain-fever.

"Adair!"

"Yes, sir?"

"What--_what_ do you mean?"

"It _was_ Dunster, sir. I got a letter from him only five minutes
ago, in which he said that he had painted Sammy--Sampson, the dog,
sir, for a rag--for a joke, and that, as he didn't want any one here
to get into a row--be punished for it, I'd better tell Mr. Downing at
once. I tried to find Mr. Downing, but he wasn't in the house. Then I
met Smith outside the house, and he told me that Mr. Downing had gone
over to see you, sir."

"Smith told you?" said Mr. Downing.

"Yes, sir."

"Did you say anything to him about your having received this letter
from Dunster?"

"I gave him the letter to read, sir."

"And what was his attitude when he had read it?"

"He laughed, sir."

"_Laughed!_" Mr. Downing's voice was thunderous.

"Yes, sir. He rolled about."

Mr. Downing snorted.

"But Adair," said the headmaster, "I do not understand how this thing
could have been done by Dunster. He has left the school."

"He was down here for the Old Sedleighans' match, sir. He stopped the
night in the village."

"And that was the night the--it happened?"

"Yes, sir."

"I see. Well, I am glad to find that the blame cannot be attached to
any boy in the school. I am sorry that it is even an Old Boy. It was a
foolish, discreditable thing to have done, but it is not as bad as if
any boy still at the school had broken out of his house at night to do
it."

"The sergeant," sa