Then James, who was excited to a very great amount, said these strange words—
"I had come to confess that it was me killed your guinea-pig! I couldn't hide it any more. It's haunting me—not the pig, but the killing of it. I hoped, and even prayed in my prayers, that you might detect me, but you didn't. Then I wrote home for ten shillings for a debt of honour, and put it in your desk, and disguised the spelling—but still I was haunted by it. And now, as you are here, I confess it openly to you that I killed your beautiful, kind-hearted pig, and I hope you'll forgive me for doing a beastly, blackguard thing. And if you can't forgive it, I'll tell the Doctor and get flogged rather than go on like this; because it's haunting me."
Peters said, "How did you do it?"
And James said, "With poison from the laboratory mixed in his bran."
And Peters was so much rejoiced when he heard this, that he forgave the worm, James, on the spot.
"That is where sending the stomach to Somerset House would have come in," said Peters; "but as I was not in a position to do this, I do not so much feel the slur of not having discovered you were the criminal."
He forgave James freely. Then he said—
"You may be amused to know that I am also here about a crime. I thought I'd found one out and, instead of that, I've jolly well committed a crime myself. In fact, it's about the queerest thing, really, that has ever happened in the annals of crime."
Then he told the story of the pencil-sharpener to James, and showed James the pencil-sharpener to prove it. James actually had the pencil-sharpener in his hand, when who should come in—not the Doctor—but the matron, with the extraordinary news that the mother of Peters was just arrived and had to see him at once! This was so awfully surprising to Peters that he went straight away to the drawing-room and left the pencil-sharpener with James; and in the drawing-room were the Doctor and Peters's mother, who, after all, had merely come to tell him that his uncle was dead. But far more important things than that happened in the study, because when Peters arrived to see his mother, the Doctor, having said something about bearing the shocks of life with manly fortitude, went off to his study, and there, of course, was James waiting for him.
And what James did we heard afterwards. First, on thinking it over, he began to doubt why he should confess about the guinea-pig to the Doctor, now that Peters had utterly forgiven him. And he speedily decided that there was no occasion to do so. But then, out of gratitude to Peters, he determined to carry through the delicate task of getting the pencil-sharpener back to the Doctor. And he did. He told the Doctor that he had taken the thing, because he thought it was Pratt's. He said he felt sure Pratt must have left it in the study by mistake. But he didn't say anything about thinking the Doctor had stolen it, and, in fact, was so jolly cunning altogether that he never got into a row at all. The Doctor ended up by remarking that Pratt's having one was a curious coincidence, and he said to James, "As for you, boy James, you stand acquitted of everything but too much zeal. Zeal, however——" and then he talked a lot of stuff about zeal, which James did not remember.