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, before their friends and enemies added keenly to the misery they felt.  So, with eyes bent on the floor, Eric and Charlie awaited their sentence.

“Williams and Wildney,” said Dr. Rowlands in a solemn voice, of which every articulation thrilled to the heart of every hearer, “you have been detected in a sin most disgraceful and most dangerous.  On Saturday night you were both drinking, and you were guilty of such gross excess, that you were neither of you in a fit state to appear among your companions—­least of all to appear among them at the hour of prayer.  I shall not waste many words on an occasion like this;