r one won't have you as a fag any
longer, and I shouldn't think that anyone else would either."

With which cutting remark he left Walter to his reflections.

CHAPTER NINE.

PENITENCE.

"If hearty sorrow
Be a sufficient ransom for offence,
I tender it here; I do as truly suffer
As e'er I did commit."

Two Gentlemen of Verona.--Act five, scene 4.

Next morning Walter was reconducted to the private room, and there, with
a kind of dull pain in head and heart, awaited the sentence which was to
decide his fate. His fancy had left Saint Winifred's altogether; it was
solely occupied with Semlyn, and the dear society at home. Walter was
rehearsing again and again in his mind the scene of his return; what he
should say to his father; how he should dry his mother's tears; and how
he should bear himself, on his return, towards his little brothers and
sisters. Would he, expelled from Saint Winifred's, ever be able to look
anyone in the face again at home?

While he was brooding over these fancies, someone, breathless with
haste, ran up to his room, and again a note was thrust underneath the
door. He seized it quickly, and read--

"Dear Walter,--I am so glad to be the first to tell you that you are
not to be expelled. Paton has begged you off. No time for more. I
have slipped away before morning school to leave you this news, and
can't stay lest I should be caught. Good-bye, from your ever
affectionate friend,

"H.K."

The boy's heart gave one bound of joy as he read this. If he were not
expelled he was ready to bear meekly any other punishment appointed to
his offence. But his banishment from the school would cause deep
affliction to others besides himself, and this was why he had dreaded it
with such a feeling of despair.

Alone as he was in the little room, he fell on his knees, and heartily
and humbly thanked God for this answer to his earnest, passionate,
reiterated prayer; and then he read Kenrick's note again.

"Paton has begged you off." He repeated this sentence over and over
again, aloud and to himself, and seemed as if he could never realise it.
Paton--Paton, the very man whom he had so deeply and irreparably
injured--had begged him off, and shielded him from a punishment which no
one could have considered too severe for his fault. Young and
inexperienced as Walter Evson was, he could not, of course, fully
understand and appreciate the _amount_ of the loss, the nature