fforts of the boys to get the matter hushed up.

Pledge heard it with an amused smile.

"They've just been here to try and buy me off," said the indignant
shopkeeper, "but I'm going to make an example of them. I'm sorry to do
it, Mr Pledge, but it's only fair to myself, isn't it, sir?"

"I don't know," said Pledge; "I don't see that it will do you much good.
You'd better leave it to me."

"Leave it to you?"

"Well, I expect I can get back your pencil as easily as you can, if
they've got it. You're sure they have got it?"

"I'm certain Master Coote took it; certain as I stand here. What
they've done with it among them I can't say."

"Well, don't be in a hurry. I'm a monitor, you know, and it's as much
to my interest to follow the thing up as to yours. If you'll take my
advice, you won't be in a hurry to prosecute. Wait a week."

"Very good, sir," said the bookseller, to whom it was really a relief to
postpone final action for a day or two, at least. If Pledge, meanwhile,
should succeed in bringing the culprit to book, it would still rest with
Mr Webster to decide whether to make an example of him or not Pledge
departed, and the bookseller turned to dust his shop out for the day.
In this occupation he had not proceeded far, when his brush, penetrating
into a crack in his counter, caused something within to rattle. Being a
tidy man, and not favouring dust or dirt of any sort, even out of sight,
he proceeded to probe the hole in order to clear away the obstruction,
when, to his amazement and consternation, he discovered, snugly lying in
the hollow, the lost pencil-case!

Mr Webster's first thought was, "Artful young rogues! They've brought
it back, and hidden it here to escape punishment!"

And yet, when he came to think of it, all the dust in that hole could
not have settled there during the last half-hour; nor--and he was sure
of this--had either of the boys, on their last two visits, been anywhere
near that side of his shop.

After all, he had "run his head against a stone wall," and narrowly
escaped ruining himself as far as Templeton was concerned. For he knew
the young gentlemen of that school well enough to be sure, after a
blunder like this, that the place would soon have become too hot to hold
him.

Mr Webster positively gasped at the thought of his narrow escape, and
forgot all about Pledge, and the culprit, and the culprit's friends, in
his self congratulation.

About mid-day, however, h