of research and
thought? where are the hundreds of references which I had sought out and
verified with hours of heavy midnight labour? how am I to have access
again to the scores of books which I consulted before I began to work?
The very thought of it sickens me. Youth and hope are over. No,
Percival, there is no more to be said. I am robbed of a life's work.
Leave me, please, alone for a little, until I have learnt to say less
bitterly, `God's will be done.'"

"`He needeth not
Either man's work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke they please him best,'"

said Mr Percival, in a tone of kind and deep sympathy, as he left him
to return to the schoolroom.

But once in sight of Mr Paton's open and rifled desk, Mr Percival's
pent-up indignation burst forth into clear flame. Stopping in front of
Mr Paton's form, he exclaimed, in a voice that rang with scorn and
sorrow--

"You boys do not know the immense mischief which your thoughtless and
worthless spite and folly have caused. I say `boys,' but I believe, and
rejoice to believe, that one only of you is guilty, and I rejoice too,
that _that_ one is a new boy, who must have brought here feelings and
passions more worthy of an ignorant and ill-trained plough-boy than of a
Saint Winifred's scholar. The hand that would burn a valuable
manuscript would fire a rick of hay."

"O sir," said Henderson, starting up and interrupting him, "we were all
very nearly as bad. It was the rest of us that burnt the
imposition-book; Evson had nothing to do with that." Henderson had
forgotten for the moment that he at least had had no share in burning
the imposition-book, for his warm quick heart could not bear that these
blows should fall unbroken on his friend's head.

But his generous effort failed; for Mr Percival, barely noticing the
interruption, continued, "The imposition-book? I know nothing about
that. If you burnt it you were very foolish and reckless; you deserve
no doubt to be punished for it, but that was _comparatively_ nothing.
But do you know, bad boy," he said, turning again to Walter, "do you
know what _you_ have done? Do you know that your dastardly spitefulness
has led you to destroy writings which had cost your master years and
years of toil that cannot be renewed? He treated you with unswerving
impartiality; he never punished you but when you deserved punishment,
and when he believed it to be for your good, and yet you turn upon him
in th