“Come here!”

He shuffled forward, and she placed a chair upon the platform near her own.

“Sit there!”

Then (but not at all as if nothing had happened), she continued the lesson in arithmetic.  Spiritually the children may have learned a lesson in very small fractions indeed as they gazed at the fragment of sin before them on the stool of penitence.  They all stared at him attentively with hard and passionately interested eyes, in which there was never one trace of pity.  It cannot be said with precision that he writhed; his movement was more a slow, continuous squirm, effected with a ghastly assumption of languid indifference; while his gaze, in the effort to escape the marble-hearted glare of his schoolmates, affixed itself with apparent permanence to the waistcoat button of James Russell Lowell just above the “U” in “Russell.”

Classes came and classes went, grilling him with eyes.  Newcomers received the story of the crime in darkling whispers; and the outcast sat and sat and sat, and squirmed and squirmed and squirmed. (He did one or two things with his spine which a professional contortionist would have observed with real interest.) And all this while of freezing suspense was but the criminal’s detention awaiting trial.  A known punishment may be anticipated with some measure of equanimity; at least, the prisoner may prepare himself to undergo it; but the unknown looms more monstrous for every attempt to guess it.  Penrod’s crime was unique; there were no rules to aid him in estimating the vengeance to fall upon him for it.  What seemed most probable was that he would be expelled from the schools in the presence of his family, the mayor, and council, and afterward whipped by his father upon the State House steps, with the entire city as audience by invitation of the authorities.

Noon came.  The rows of children filed out, every head turning for a last unpleasingly speculative look at the outlaw.  Then Miss Spence closed the door into the cloakroom and that into the big hall, and came and sat at her desk, near Penrod.  The tramping of feet outside, the shrill calls and shouting and the changing voices of the older boys ceased to be heard—­and there was silence.  Penrod, still affecting to be occupied with Lowell, was conscious that Miss Spence looked at him intently.

“Penrod,” she said gravely, “what excuse have you to offer before I report your case to the principal?”

The word “principal” struck him to the vitals.  Grand Inquisitor, Grand Khan, Sultan, Emperor, Tsar, Caesar Augustus—­these are comparable.  He stopped squirming instantly, and sat rigid.

“I want an answer.  Why did you shout those words at me?”

“Well,” he murmured, “I was just—­thinking.”

“Thinking what?” she asked sharply.

“I don’t know.”

“That won’t do!”

He took his left ankle in his right hand and regarded it helplessly.