to eight go twice." He was beginning to divide 672 by 9, an impossible
task, when the breakfast bell rang, and Smith said to him: "Come on!"

"I can't," said Hart Minor, "I haven't finished my sum."

Smith glanced at his page and said: "Oh that's all right, don't you see?
The answer's 108."

Hart Minor wrote down 108 and put a large R next to the sum, which meant
Right.

The boys went in to breakfast. After breakfast they returned to
the fourth division schoolroom, where they were to be instructed in
arithmetic for an hour by Mr. Whitehead. Mr. Whitehead called for
the sums. He glanced through Smith's and found them correct, and then
through Hart Minor's. His attention was arrested by the last division.

"What's this?" he demanded. "Four's into thirty-eight don't go six
times. You've got the right answer and the wrong working. What does this
mean?" And Mr. Whitehead bit his knuckles savagely. "Somebody," he said,
"has been helping you."

Hart Minor owned that he had received help from Smith. Mr. Whitehead
shook him violently, and said, "Do you know what this means?"

Hart Minor had no sort of idea as to the inner significance of his act,
except that he had finished his sums.

"It means," said Mr. Whitehead, "that you're a cheat and a thief: you've
been stealing marks. For the present you can stand on the stool of
penitence and I'll see what is to be done with you later."

The stool of penitence was a high, three-cornered stool, very narrow at
the top. When boys in this division misbehaved themselves they had to
stand on it during the rest of the lesson in the middle of the room.

Hart Minor fetched the stool of penitence and climbed up on it. It
wobbled horribly.

After the lesson, which was punctuated throughout by Mr. Whitehead with
bitter comments on the enormity of theft, the boys went to chapel. Smith
and Hart were in the choir: they wore white surplices which were put on
in the vestry. Hart Minor, who knew that he was in for a terrific row of
some kind, thought he observed something unusual in the conduct of the
masters who were assembled in the vestry. They were all tittering. Mr.
Whitehead seemed to be convulsed with uncontrollable laughter. The choir
walked up the aisle. Hart Minor noticed that all the boys in the school,
and the servants who sat behind them, and the master's wife who sat in
front, and the organist who played the harmonium, were all staring at
him with unwonted interest; the boys we