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our life, depend, not upon our own puny wills, but upon an all-wise and an all-knowing Providence. . . .”
    Revell almost laughed.  He knew that immediately after evening service it was the custom for the whole school to adjourn to the assembly hall and spend twenty minutes, presided over by a master, in writing letters, reading books, or some other silent occupation.
    “Wasn’t it awful?” whispered Mrs. Ellington, as they left the pew after the Benediction; and she added, without waiting for him to reply:  “But it was positively cheerful compared with some that we HAVE had.  By the way, how long are you staying?”
    He said that he would most likely be returning to London the next morning.
    “Don’t forget to visit us when you come again,” she said with a smile, and Revell, shaking hands, promised accordingly.
    During supper with the Head he could not resist the temptation to be oracular.  “I think I’ve solved your little mystery, sir,” he remarked, after preliminary conversation.
    But Roseveare, rather to his surprise, showed no eagerness for him to explain.  “Revell,” he answered, with slow emphasis, “I’m afraid I owe you an apology.  There IS no mystery.  I sent for you in a moment of nervous prostration—now, in a more normal condition, I can realise fully what you must have thought of it all.  You have disguised your feelings with great politeness, my dear boy, but I can judge of them all the same.  And you’re right, too.  I have allowed myself to be completely foolish, and I apologise to you most sincerely for wasting your time. . . .  Do help yourself to some more wine.”
    Revell did so, rather crestfallen.  “All the same,” he rejoined, “though I quite agree with you that there isn’t any real mystery, I do happen to have found a reason—or at least a theory—to explain the note left in Marshall’s algebra-book.”  He felt rather piqued at Roseveare’s latest attitude; having done his job, it was disappointing to be received with apologies instead of congratulations.  “You see,” he went on, “it was all a matter of the boy’s temperament.  He was, I gather, the sensitive, imaginative type.  Now it so happened that on the first Sunday evening of Term Captain Daggat preached a rather doleful sermon—all about sudden death and that sort of thing.  I know, because in his sermon to-night he made a great point of recalling what he had said then.  Well . . . my theory is that Marshall, over-impressed by it all, went straight away into the hall afterwards and wrote out that rather amateurish last will and testament. . . .  Don’t you think it possible?”
    “More than possible—very probable, I should think.  But the whole thing is, as I said, too foolish to be worried about. . . .  Come into the study and let us take a liqueur and talk of pleasanter things.”
    Revell was not wholly mollified, even by the excellent old brandy that followed.  He could not understand the other’s sudden change of mood, and he felt a little sore at the manner in which his really brilliant theory had been received.  By the morning, however, he had come to the conclusion that Roseveare perhaps did suffer from sudden baseless apprehensions, and after breakfast the two parted with many expressions of mutual esteem.  “You must certainly come and see me again,” urged the Headmaster of Oakington, shaking hands with him from the porch.  “I shall look forward to it exceedingly.”  And Revell replied with some sincerity that he would also.  Just at the last moment the other thrust a sealed envelope into his hand.  “Don’t open it till you get into the train,” he said.  “Good-bye—good-bye.”
    Revell, of course, opened it in the taxi.  It contained a cheque for ten guineas and a sheet of notepaper on which were written the words “For Professional Services”.
     
     
    In his private diary (which he vaguely imagined might some day be published in a number of