If he had gone out

Mr. Wain sat on for some minutes after his companion had left,pondering over the news he had heard. Even now he clung to the ideathat Appleby had made some extraordinary mistake. Gradually he beganto convince himself of this. He had seen Wyatt actually in bed aquarter of an hour before--not asleep, it was true, but apparently onthe verge of dropping off. And the bars across the window had lookedso solid.... Could Appleby have been dreaming? Something of the kindmight easily have happened. He had been working hard, and the nightwas warm.... 　　Then it occurred to him that he could easily prove or disprove thetruth of his colleague's statement by going to the dormitory andseeing if Wyatt were there or not. If he had gone out, he would hardlyhave returned yet. 　　He took a candle, and walked quietly upstairs. 　　Arrived at his step-son's dormitory, he turned the door-handle softlyand went in. The light of the candle fell on both beds. Mike wasthere, asleep. He grunted, and turned over with his face to the wallas the light shone on his eyes. But the other bed was empty. Applebyhad been right. 　　If further proof had been needed, one of the bars was missing from thewindow. The moon shone in through the empty space. 　　The house-master sat down quietly on the vacant bed. He blew thecandle out, and waited there in the semi-darkness, thinking. For yearshe and Wyatt had lived in a state of armed neutrality, broken byvarious small encounters. Lately, by silent but mutual agreement, theyhad kept out of each other's way as much as possible, and it hadbecome rare for the house-master to have to find fault officially withhis step-son. But there had never been anything even remotelyapproaching friendship between them. Mr. Wain was not a man whoinspired affection readily, least of all in those many years youngerthan himself. Nor did he easily grow fond of others. Wyatt he hadregarded, from the moment when the threads of their lives becameentangled, as a complete nuisance. 　　It was not, therefore, a sorrowful, so much as an exasperated, vigilthat he kept in the dormitory. There was nothing of the sorrowingfather about his frame of mind. He was the house-master about to dealwith a mutineer, and nothing else. 　　This breaking-out, he reflected wrathfully, was the last straw. 　　Wyatt's presence had been a nervous inconvenience to him for years.

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