This was confidently delivered, and it made an undoubted impression on at least two or three members of the Board. But now Mr. Morton broke in, quietly:
"I thought some such attempt as this might be made. So I waited until I saw what the young man's line of defense might be. Here is an envelope in which one of the copies was received by the captain of a rival football team. You will note that the sender, while understanding something about the use of a type machine, was plainly a novice in directing an envelope on the typewriter. So he addressed this envelope in handwriting. Here is the envelope in question, and here is one of Mr. Drayne's school examination papers, also in his own handwriting. I will ask the members of the Board to examine both."
There was silence, while the copies passed from hand to hand,
Drayne losing color at this point.
"Be brassy!" he whispered to himself. "You'll pull through, Phin, old boy."
"I am sorry to say, Mr. Drayne, that the evidence appears to be against you," declared the chairman slowly.
"It may, sir," returned the boy, "but it isn't conclusive evidence."
"Have you anything more to say, Mr. Morton?" asked the chairman, looking at the submaster.
"Plenty, Mr. Chairman, if the Board will listen to me."
"Proceed, Mr. Morton."
The football coach thereupon launched into a swiftly spoken tirade against the "brand of coward and sneak" who would betray his school in such a fashion. Without naming Phin, Mr. Morton analyzed the motives and the character of such a sneak, and he did it mercilessly, although in the most parliamentary language. Nor did he look toward the boy, but Phin was squirming under the lash, his face alternately red or ghastly.