"I'm going to do my best not to be sent back here," said Lewis, striving to continue his bravado, although his heart was sinking as he began to realize more and more in what a predicament he had placed himself. "Such a set of muffs, teachers and scholars, I never met. No one can take a joke, or even see it."
"I think it likely your efforts will be crowned with success," said Raymond Stewart, himself a boy of not too much principle, but who, in common with the rest of the school, had been inexpressibly shocked and revolted by Lewis' conduct.
"You are dismissed," said Mr. Merton, appearing at the door. "Lewis
Flagg, you are to go to the doctor in his study."
What sentence was meted out to Lewis in that interview with the doctor the boys did not know until their return to school after the holidays, when he did not appear among them, and they were told on inquiry that he would not do so.
He endeavored to brazen it out with Dr. Leacraft as he had with the boys, insisting that the whole affair, the abstraction of the money and the placing it in Seabrooke's trunk, was "only a joke;" but the doctor altogether refused to look upon it in any other light than that of an unmitigated theft and an atrocious attempt to fasten it upon another when he feared detection for himself.
No protestations to the contrary served Lewis' turn, and from this day forth his evil influence was happily lost to the school.
And this was the story which Percy had to pour into the ears of his innocent young sister on his return home.
On the first opportunity which presented itself the morning after his arrival at his uncle's he told her all, extenuating nothing of his own misconduct and weakness in the beginning, and acknowledging that he had almost wilfully suffered himself to be led into disobedience and wrong, and richly deserved all the shame and trouble which had fallen upon him.
Lena was inexpressibly shocked by the account of this last wickedness of Flagg's, for she, in common with Dr. Leacraft and every one else who heard the tale, gave him credit only for the deliberate theft of Percy's money and then of the effort to throw it upon Seabrooke, either as an act of revenge or else because he feared that it would be found in his possession.
He returned to her the hundred-dollar note which had such a story attached to it, and in his turn had to hear from Lena her belief that the second sum sent for his relief had come from Hannah, and that the old nurse had sacrificed the gold which she had destined for her own glorification to his rescue from his predicament.