She appeared to examine a book for a few moments, then raised her head, looked at the faces before her with a troubled expression, and began to speak.

“I wish to know who can give me any account of the way in which Harriet Smales received her hurt.  Stop!  Hands only, please.  And only those raise their hands who actually saw the blow struck, and overheard all that led to it.  You understand, now?  One, two, three —­seven altogether, that is quite enough.  Those seven will wait in the room at four o’clock till the others have all gone.  Now I will give the first class their sums.”

The afternoon passed Very slowly to teacher and pupils alike.  When the clock struck four, work was put away with more than the usual noise and hurry.  Miss Rutherford seemed for a time to be on the point of making some new address to the school before the children departed, but eventually she decided to keep silence, and the dismissal was got over as quickly as possible.  The seven witnesses remained, solemnly seated at their desks, all anxious-looking.

“Lucy Wood,” Miss Rutherford began, when the door was closed and quiet, “you are the eldest.  Please tell me all you can of this sad affair.”

There was one of the seven faces far more discomposed than the rest, a sweet and spiritual little countenance; it was tear-stained, red-eyed; the eager look, the trembling lips spoke some intimate cause of sympathy.  Before the girl addressed had time to begin her answer, this other, one would have said in spite of herself, intervened with an almost agonised question.

“Oh, Miss Rutherford, is Harriet really dead?”

“Hush, hush!” said the lady, with a shocked look.  “No, my dear, she is only badly hurt.”

“And she really won’t die?” pleaded the child, with an instant brightening of look.

“Certainly not, certainly not.  Now be quiet, Maud, and let Lucy begin.”

Lucy, a sensible and matter-of-fact girl, made a straightforward narration, the facts of which were concurred in by her companions.  Harriet Smales, it seemed, had been exercising upon Ida for some days her utmost powers of irritation, teasing her, as Lucy put it, “beyond all bearing.”  The cause of this was not unknown in the school, and Miss Rutherford remembered the incident from which the malice dated.  Harriet had copied a sum in class from Ida’s slate—­ she was always copying from somebody—­and the teacher, who had somehow detected her, asked Ida plainly whether such was not the case.  Ida made no reply, would not speak, which of course was taken as confirmatory evidence, and the culprit had accordingly received an imposition.  Her spleen, thus aroused, Harriet vented upon the other girl, who, she maintained, ought to have stoutly denied the possibility of the alleged deceit, and so have saved her.  She gave poor Ida no rest, and her persecution had culminated this afternoon; she began to “call Ida’s mother names,” the result of which was that the assailed one suddenly snatched up her slate, and, in an uncontrollable fit of passion, struck her tormentor a blow with it upon the forehead.