t
as yet; and every guilty heart among those 250 boys beat fast lest _his_
sin too should have been discovered, and he should be called out for
some public and heavy punishment.

The hour arrived. The boys thronging into the great school-room, took
their places according to their respective forms. The masters in their
caps and gowns were all seated on a small semicircular bench at the
upper end of the room, and in the centre of them, before a small table,
sate Dr. Rowlands.

The sound of whispering voices sank to a dead and painful hush. The
blood was tingling consciously in many cheeks, and not even a breath
could be heard in the deep expectation of that anxious and
solemn moment.

Dr. Rowlands spread before him the list of the school, and said, "I
shall first read out the names of the boys in the first-fifth, and
upper-fourth forms."

This was done to ascertain formally whether the boys were present on
whose account the meeting was convened; and it at once told Eric and
Wildney that _they_ were the boys to be punished, and that the others
had escaped.

The names were called over, and an attentive observer might have told,
from the sound of the boys' voices as they answered, which of them were
afflicted with a troubled conscience.

Another slight pause, and breathless hush.

"Eric Williams and Charles Wildney, stand forward."

The boys obeyed. From his place in the fifth, where he was sitting with
his head propped on his hand, Eric rose and advanced; and Wildney, from
the other end of the room, where the younger boys sat, getting up, came
and stood by his side.

Both of them fixed their eyes on the ground, whence they never once
raised them; and in the deadly pallor of their haggard faces, you could
scarcely have recognized the joyous high-spirited friends, whose laugh
and shout had often rung so merrily through the play-ground, and woke
the echoes of the rocks along the shore. Every eye was on them, and
they were conscious of it, though they could not see it--painfully
conscious of it, so that they wished the very ground to yawn beneath
their feet for the moment, and swallow up their shame. Companionship in
disgrace increased the suffering; had either of them been alone, he
would have been less acutely sensible to the trying nature of his
position; but that they, so different in their ages and position in the
school, should thus have their friendship and the results of it
blazoned, or rather branded, befo