get to bed, and leave Dr. Moncrief to recapture his ruffianly pupil
as best he could.

Accordingly, at half-past one o'clock, the doctor was roused by a
knocking at his chamber-door, outside which he presently found his
professor of mathematics, bruised, muddy, and apparently inebriated.
Five minutes elapsed before Wilson could get his principal's mind on
the right track. Then the boys were awakened and the roll called.
Byron and Molesworth were reported absent. No one had seen them go;
no one had the least suspicion of how they got out of the house. One
little boy mentioned the skylight; but observing a threatening
expression on the faces of a few of the bigger boys, who were fond
of fruit, he did not press his suggestion, and submitted to be
snubbed by the doctor for having made it. It was nearly three
o'clock before the alarm reached the village, where the authorities
tacitly declined to trouble themselves about it until morning. The
doctor, convinced that the lad had gone to his mother, did not
believe that any search was necessary, and contented himself with
writing a note to Mrs. Byron describing the attack on Mr. Wilson,
and expressing regret that no proposal having for its object the
readmission of Master Byron to the academy could be entertained.

The pursuit was now directed entirely after Molesworth, an it wan
plain, from Mr. Wilson's narrative, that he had separated from
Cashel outside Panley. Information was soon forthcoming. Peasants in
all parts of the country had seen, they said, "a lad that might be
him." The search lasted until five o'clock next afternoon, when it
was rendered superfluous by the appearance of Gully in person,
footsore and repentant. After parting from Cashel and walking two
miles, he had lost heart and turned back. Half way to the cross