"Pages from the Black Book still missing. Greatest loss of all—the old flag of the school. It waves over the school no longer. We have doffed the cap and bells, and gone into sackcloth and ashes. Our heart is heavy. We can smile no longer. We can only whistle one tune—the Dead March. Our heart will continue heavy. Our noble frontispiece will never beam again. Our lips will continue to warble the same melancholy tune until the old flag once more waves over Garside!"
Stripped of its note of bombast, this last paragraph echoed pretty accurately the feeling of the Garsiders at the loss of their flag. Their pride had been more sorely wounded even than it had been by the affair at the sand-pit. They had been flouted and dishonoured, and, though no proof was forthcoming, they felt sure that this insult had been placed upon them by their rivals—at St. Bede's.
Paul, meantime, had seen nothing of Hibbert since the day when his confession had been interrupted by Mr. Weevil. Frequently he recalled that strange scene—the boy's eerie-looking, pain-drawn face, the sad eyes fixed on his, the earnest voice, with its suppressed note of fear—as he began to unfold to him the secret that weighed upon his heart and conscience. It seemed so real, yet so unreal. The face looking up into his seemed real enough. It was the words he could not make sure of. Hibbert must have been wandering.
At any rate, he had not sent for him since the afternoon he had spoken such strange words, and that was nearly a week since.
"Of course, he was wandering, poor little chap, and has forgotten all about it by this time. I shall have a good laugh with him about it when he gets on his legs again," he told himself.
It was the sixth day after the accident on the river that Paul was informed by Bax that a visitor wished to see him in the visitors' room. A visitor! Who could it be? Paul had very few visitors to see him.
"Ah, it's Mr. Moncrief; come at last in answer to my letter!" he thought, as he made his way to the room.
He was doomed to disappointment, however, for he found, on entering the room, that the visitor was a perfect stranger to him—a slim, wiry-figured gentleman, with a frock-coat buttoned closely over his chest, reddish-brown full beard, and glasses, through which a sharp pair of eyes at once went to Paul. Mr. Weevil was standing beside the visitor on the hearthrug.
"This is the lad I spoke of, Mr. Hibbert—Paul Percival."
The master briefly introduced them. Paul was at once interested. This gentleman with the tawny beard, and erect, alert, military bearing, was Hibbert's father.