The watch and chain could not be found, and there was but little doubt that they had been stolen.
Mr.Welsby called the boys together, and though he spoke in a calm and collected manner, with no trace of passion in his voice, yet his words made them all tremble.

Miss Eleanor sat silent at the tea-table, with a shocked expression on her face; and Mr.Blake, when told of the occurrence, said sharply, "Well, we'd better have locks put on everything, and the sooner the better." Acton produced his bunch of keys, and insisted that all his possessions should be searched, and every one else followed his example.

The whole of the next afternoon was spent in a careful examination of desks and boxes, but with no result beyond the discovery that Mugford owned a cord waistcoat which he had 'never had the moral courage to wear.
There is one feature in the administration of justice by an English court which is unhappily too often overlooked in the lynch law of schoolboys, and that is the principle that a man shall be considered innocent until he has been clearly proved guilty.

Smarting under a sense of shame which was entirely unmerited, every boy sought eagerly for some object on which to vent his indignation; it became necessary, to use the words of the comic opera, that "a victim should be found," and suspicion fell on Kennedy and Jacobs.

The result of Diggory's trap seemed to show that the various thefts had been committed at night.
It was agreed that the two occupants of the "Main-top" had special opportunity for getting out of the house if so minded; every other room had one or more fellows in it who had suffered the loss of some property; and lastly, Kennedy was known to possess a pair of hob-nailed fishing-boots, which he usually kept under his bed.