“There’s seven! We must go in, or Huntley will be on to us. Mind!” added Pierce senior, for he was the speaker, “we must all keep each other’s counsel, and be in one tale—that we know nothing at all about it.”
They slunk into school. But that the senior boy was occupied with his new duty—the calling over of the roll—he might have observed that something was wrong. To play up a bit of mischief is the legitimate privilege of college boys; but to have led to a companion’s death is a terror-striking affair; and their countenances betrayed that it was so.
Before the roll was finished, the head-master was in school. Tom Channing—it was late for him—entered afterwards. The master beckoned to him.
“Is Charles found?”
“No, sir. We cannot learn any tidings of him at all. We have not been to bed, any of us; and the police are searching also.”
Had Tom Channing come from the other side of the Boundaries, near the boat-house, perhaps he might have been able to give a different account.
The master made no comment then. He motioned Tom to his desk, and gave the word for prayers. As the boys were rising from their knees, Hamish Channing entered the school, attended by Mr. Ketch.
Hamish approached the master, who shook hands with him. Ketch remained snarling and grinning defiance at the door, shaking his fist and his old teeth covertly at the boys. If looks could have blown up a room, the college school had certainly gone aloft then.
“I hear you have not found the boy?” said the master to Hamish. “It is very singular.”
“We have not found him. Mr. Pye,” continued Hamish, gravely, “I come to demand of your courtesy an immediate investigation into the doings of the college boys last night. That the disappearance of Charles is in some measure connected with it, we cannot do otherwise than believe. I have brought Ketch with me that he may tell his own tale.”