“I—–­I beg your pardon, sir.  I cannot answer that.”

“You can’t?  Why not, Mr. Prescott?” demanded the principal.

Again the principal launched his most compelling look.

“Because, sir,” answered Dick, quietly, and in a tone in which no sign of disrespect could be detected, “it would strike me as being dishonorable to drag others into this affair.”

“You would consider it dishonorable?” cried Mr. Cantwell, his face again turning deathly white with inward rage. “You, who admit having had a big hand in what was really an outrage?”

But Dick met and returned the other’s gaze composedly.

“The Board of Education, Mr. Cantwell, has several times decided that one pupil in the public schools cannot be compelled by a teacher to bear tales that implicate another student.  I have admitted my own share in the joke that has so much displeased you, but I cannot name any others.”

“You must!” insisted the principal, rising swiftly from his chair.

“I regret to have to say, sir,” responded Prescott, quietly, “that I shall not do it.  If you make it necessary, I shall have to take refuge behind the rulings of the Board of Education on that point.”

Mr. Cantwell glared at Dick, but the latter still met the gaze unflinchingly.

Then the principal began to feel his wrath rising to such a point that he found himself threatened with an angry outburst.  As his temper had often betrayed him before in life, Mr. Cantwell, pointing angrily to Dick’s place, said: 

“Back to your seat, Mr. Prescott, until I have given this matter a little more thought!”

Immediately afterward the principal quitted the room.  Dick, after sitting in silence for a few moments, drew his history again from his desk, turned over the pages, found the place he wanted and began to read.

It was ten minutes later when the principal returned to the room.  He had been to one of the class rooms, where he had paced up and down until he felt that he could control himself enough to utter a few words.  Now, he came back.

“Prescott, I shall have to think over your admission before I come to any decision in the matter.  I may not be able to announce my decision for a while.  I shall give it most careful thought.  In the meantime, I trust, very sincerely, that you will not be caught in any more mischief—–­least of all, anything as serious, as revolutionary, as yesterday’s outrageous impudence.  You may go, now—–­for to-day!”

“Very good, sir,” replied Dick Prescott, who had risen at his desk as soon as Mr. Cantwell began to talk to him.  As young Prescott passed from the room he favored the principal with a decorous little bow.

Dave Darrin, Tom Reade, Greg Holmes, Harper and another member of the freshman class, came out of various places of hiding.  As he went down the stairs Dick was obliged to tread heavily enough to drown out their more stealthy footfalls.