As yet, Eric had never been caned.  It would have been easy for him in this case to clear himself without mentioning names, but (very rightly) he thought it unmanly to clamor about being punished, and he felt nettled at Mr. Gordon’s merely official belief of his word.  He knew that he had his faults, but certainly want of honor was not among them.  Indeed, there were only three boys out of the twenty in the form, who did not resort to modes of unfairness far worse than the use of cribs, and those three were Russell, Owen, and himself; even Duncan, even Montagu, inured to it by custom, were not ashamed to read their lesson off a concealed book, or copy a date from a furtive piece of paper.  They would have been ashamed of it before they came to Roslyn school, but the commonness of the habit had now made them blind or indifferent to its meanness.  It was peculiarly bad in the fourth form, because the master treated them with implicit confidence, and being scrupulously honorable himself, was unsuspicious of others.  He was therefore extremely indignant at this apparent discovery of an attempt to overreach him in a boy so promising and so much of a favorite as Eric Williams.

“Hold out your hand,” he repeated.

Eric did so, and the cane tingled sharply across his palm.  He could bear the pain well enough, but he was keenly alive to the disgrace; he, a boy at the head of his form, to be caned in this way by a man who didn’t understand him, and unjustly too!  He mustered up an indifferent air, closed his lips tight, and determined to give no further signs.  The defiance of his look made Mr. Gordon angry, and he inflicted in succession five hard cuts on either hand, each one of which, was more excruciating than the last.

“Now, go to your seat.”

Eric did go to his seat, with all his bad passions roused, and he walked in a jaunty and defiant kind of way that made the master really grieve at the disgrace into which he had fallen.  But he instantly became a hero with the form, who unanimously called him a great brick for not telling, and admired him immensely for bearing up without crying under so severe a punishment.  The punishment was most severe, and for some weeks after there were dark weals visible across Eric’s palm, which rendered the use of his hands painful.

“Poor Williams,” said Duncan, as they went out of school, “how very plucky of you not to cry.”

     “Vengeance deep brooding o’er the cane,
       Had locked the source of softer woe;
     And burning pride, and high disdain,
       Forbade the gentler tear to flow,”

said Eric, with a smile.

But he only bore up until he got home, and there, while he was telling his father the occurrence, he burst into a storm of passionate tears, mingled with the fiercest invectives against Mr. Gordon for his injustice.

“Never mind, Eric,” said his father; “only take care that you never get a punishment justly, and I shall always be as proud of you as I am now.  And don’t cherish this resentment, my boy; it will only do you harm.  Try to forgive and forget.”