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 were nudging each other:  he could not understand why.

When the service, which lasted twenty minutes, was over, and the boys came out of chapel, Hart Minor was the centre of a jeering crowd of boys.  He asked Smith what the cause of this was, and Smith confessed to him that before going into chapel Mr. Whitehead had pinned on his back a large sheet of paper with “Cheat” written on it, and had only removed it just before the procession walked up the aisle, hence the interest aroused.  But, contrary to his expectation, nothing further occurred; none of the masters alluded to his misdemeanour, and Hart Minor almost thought that the incident was closed—­almost, and yet really not at all; he tried to delude himself into thinking the affair would blow over, but all the while at the bottom of his heart sat a horrible misgiving.

Every Monday there was in this school what was called “reading over.”  The boys all assembled in the library and the Head Master, standing in front of his tall desk, summoned each division before him in turn.  The marks of the week were read out and the boys took places, moving either up or down according to their marks; so that a boy who was at the top of his division one week might find himself at the bottom the next week, and vice versa.

On the Sunday after the incident recorded, the boys of the fourth division were sitting in their schoolroom before luncheon, in order to write their weekly letter home.  This was the rule of the school.  Mr. Whitehead sat at his desk and talked in a friendly manner to the boys.  He was writing his weekly report in the large black report book that was used for reading over.  Mr. Whitehead was talking in a chaffing way as to who was his favourite boy.