almost
hysterical laugh.

"Suspected me of cutting the rudder-lines!" he gasped.

"Yes," said Riddell, sorrowfully. "I'm ashamed to say it."

"Why, however could you?" exclaimed the boy, in strange bewilderment.

Riddell quietly told him the whole story. Of the mysterious letter, of
his visit to Tom the boat-boy, of the knife, of the recollection of
Wyndham's movements on the night in question, and then of his supposed
admission of his guilt.

Wyndham listened to it all with breathless attention and wonder, and
when it was all done sighed as he replied, "Why, Riddell, it's like a
story, isn't it?"

"It is," said the captain, "and rather a pitiful story as far as I am
concerned."

"Not a bit," replied the boy, as sympathetically as if Riddell was the
person to be pitied and he was the person who had wronged him. "It was
all a misunderstanding. How on earth could you have helped suspecting
me? Any one would have done the same.

"But," added he, after a pause, "what ought I to do about Beamish's? Of
course that was no end of a scrape, and the mischief is, I promised
those two cads never to say a word about it. By the way, you saw me
with Silk on this bench yesterday afternoon?"

"Yes," said Riddell; "you didn't seem to be enjoying yourself."

"I should think I wasn't. I'd been trying to get him to let me off that
promise, and he had offered to do it for seven pounds, under condition.
I might have closed with him if you hadn't come past just then. He held
me down to rile you, and I got so wild I rounded on him and made him in
a frightful rage, and it's very likely now he may tell Paddy if you
don't."

"Not he," said Riddell. "You're well out of his clutches, old man, and
it strikes me the best way you can atone for that affair is by keeping
out of it for the future, and having no more to do with fellows like
that."

"What on earth should I have done," said the boy, "without you to look
after me? I'd have gone to the dogs, to a dead certainty."

"It seems I can look after you rather too much sometimes," said the
captain. "Ah, there's Silk coming this way. We needn't stop, here to
give him a return match. Come on."

And the two friends rose and strolled off happily arm-in-arm.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.

WELCH'S VERSUS PARRETT'S JUNIORS.

"Of course," said Riddell, as he and Wyndham strolled down by the river
that afternoon, "now that your mystery is all cleared up we are as far
off as ever