You concluded what I suspected you of was this, and I concluded that the scrape you were confessing was the one I suspected you of." "What do you suspect me of, then ?" inquired Wyndham, "if it wasn't that ?" "I'm ashamed to say," said the captain, "I suspected you of having cut the lines of Parrett's rudder at the boat-race." Wyndham, in the shock of this announcement, broke out into an almost hysterical laugh.
"Suspected me of cutting the rudder-lines!" he gasped.
"Yes," said Riddell, sorrowfully.

"I'm ashamed to say it." "Why, however could you ?" exclaimed the boy, in strange bewilderment.
Riddell quietly told him the whole story.

Of the mysterious letter, of his visit to Tom the boat-boy, of the knife, of the recollection of Wyndham's movements on the night in question, and then of his supposed admission of his guilt.
Wyndham listened to it all with breathless attention and wonder, and when it was all done sighed as he replied, "Why, Riddell, it's like a story, isn't it ?" "It is," said the captain, "and rather a pitiful story as far as I am concerned." "Not a bit," replied the boy, as sympathetically as if Riddell was the person to be pitied and he was the person who had wronged him.

"It was all a misunderstanding.

How on earth could you have helped suspecting me?
Any one would have done the same.
"But," added he, after a pause, "what ought I to do about Beamish's?
Of course that was no end of a scrape, and the mischief is, I promised those two cads never to say a word about it.