That Mr. B. had been shut in became, however, almost instantly known, and the night-class, usually so unruly, was awed by the event into exemplary decorum.  There, with no master near us, in a silence rarely broken by a giggle or a catcall, we sat diligently working, or pretending to work.  Through my brain, as I hung over my book a thousand new thoughts began to surge.  I was the liberator, the tyrannicide; I had freed all my fellows from the odious oppressor.  Surely, when they learned that it was I, they would cluster round me; surely, now, I should be somebody in the school-life, no longer a mere trotting shadow or invisible presence.  The interval seemed long; at length Mr. B. was released by a servant, and he came up into the school-room to find us in that ominous condition of suspense.

At first he said nothing.  He sank upon a chair in a half-fainting attitude, while he pressed his hand to his side; his distress and silence redoubled the boys’ surprise, and filled me with something like remorse.  For the first time, I reflected that he was human, that perhaps he suffered.  He rose presently and took a slate, upon which he wrote two questions:  ‘Did you do it?’ ’Do you know who did?’ and these he propounded to each boy in rotation.  The prompt, redoubled ‘No’ in every case seemed to pile up his despair.

One of the last to whom he held, in silence, the trembling slate was the perpetrator.  As I saw the moment approach, an unspeakable timidity swept over me.  I reflected that no one had seen me, that no one could accuse me.  Nothing could be easier or safer than to deny, nothing more perplexing to the enemy, nothing less perilous for the culprit.  A flood of plausible reasons invaded my brain; I seemed to see this to be a case in which to tell the truth would be not merely foolish, it would be wrong.  Yet when the usher stood before me, holding the slate out in his white and shaking hand, I seized the pencil, and, ignoring the first question, I wrote ‘Yes’ firmly against the second.  I suppose that the ambiguity of this action puzzled Mr. B. He pressed me to answer:  ‘Did you do it?’ but to that I was obstinately dumb; and away I was hurried to an empty bed-room, where for the whole of that night and the next day I was held a prisoner, visited at intervals by the headmaster and other inquisitorial persons, until I was gradually persuaded to make a full confession and apology.

This absurd little incident had one effect, it revealed me to my schoolfellows as an existence.  From that time forth I lay no longer under the stigma of invisibility; I had produced my material shape and had thrown my shadow for a moment into a legend.  But, in other respects, things went on much as before.