“I think I know whom you have in mind,” rejoined the master. “Here,” tearing two bits of paper from a sheet on his desk, “in order that our guess be independent, you write a name on this piece of paper and I will write on this. Then we will compare.”
The professor did so. Then they laid the papers side by side.
Each bore the same name, “Shanks.”
“He’s a poor stick,” mused the doctor, “but I’d hate to think that he’d sink as low as this. And, of course, so far, it is purely guess work. He may be as innocent as the driven snow. Has he ever had any trouble with Rushton?”
“Not that I know of,” was the answer, “although at one time I came upon them when they seemed to have been having words,” and Professor Raymond narrated the affair on the campus.
“Well,” Doctor Rally wound up the discussion by saying, “for the present, we suspend judgment. Keep a sharp eye on both Rushton and Shanks. I’ll not rest until I have probed this thing to the bottom.”
In the meantime Fred had gone to his room utterly crushed and despondent. The whole thing had come on him like a thunderbolt. In half an hour, from being one of the happiest boys in the school he had become the most miserable.
It seemed to him as though all his world had fallen into ruins. To be accused of theft, to be, perhaps, driven in disgrace from Rally Hall, to have all his relatives and friends know of the awful charge against him! For a time, he felt that he would go crazy.
Teddy, who was the only one in whom he could confide, was studying when Fred dragged himself in.
“Oh, Ted,” he groaned, as he threw himself down on his bed.