“Ah!” said the Doctor gravely once more. “The workings, my boy, of an uneasy mind.”
“Yes, sir, and that’s what held me back from coming to you to speak out.”
“Go on,” said the Doctor; “and speak plainly and to the point, my boy. What more have you to say?”
“Only this, sir,” cried Glyn huskily, “that the night before last I lay awake for a long time, thinking and thinking about the belt and about Singh lying there sleeping so easily and not troubling himself in the least about the loss of the emeralds; and then all at once, when my head was so hot with the worry that I felt as if I must get out and drink some cold water.—I don’t know how it was, but I began going over the big cricket-match in the field, and it was as if it was the day before, and I was fidgeting and fidgeting about the crowd there’d be, and a lot of strangers walking about the grounds and perhaps finding their way into the empty dormitories; and it all worried me so, sir, that it made me think that somebody dishonest might go to Singh’s box and carry off the emeralds, and they would never be found again.”
The Doctor leaned forward a little to gaze more fixedly in his pupil’s eyes. Then rising slowly, he reached over and placed his cool white hand upon Glyn’s forehead.
“Yes, sir,” said the boy quickly, “it’s hot—it’s hot; but it comes like that sometimes. I believe it’s from thinking too much.”
“Ah!” said the Doctor, subsiding again into his chair.
“Well, sir, I was so worried about the belt that I thought I wouldn’t say anything to Singh, but that I would take his keys, get out the case, and bring it to you in the morning.”
“Ah!” cried the Doctor excitedly now. “It would not have been right, my boy. But you did not do that.”
“No, sir,” said the boy, with a bitter laugh; “for the next minute I thought you would put it in your table-drawer, and that it wouldn’t be safe there, for strangers might come into this room, so I—” Glyn stopped, and the Doctor waited patiently. “It seemed so weak and foolish, sir,” continued Glyn at last, after moistening his parched lips with his tongue, “but I must tell you. I seemed to be obliged to do it. I took out the case and went downstairs past all the boys’ rooms, and got out through the lecture-hall window to go across the playground to the cricket-shed where the boys’ lockers are, and there I opened our locker and took out a ball of kite-string.”