his quill-pen down, took off his spectacles, and said:

"Well, Buller, what have you got to say for yourself?"

Tom hung his head, fiddled with a button of his jacket, and murmured
something to the effect that he did not know.

"It is a very serious offence of yours that has been reported to me,
nothing less than breaking out of the house, out of _my_ house, in the
dead of night. A most enormous and unparalleled proceeding. Why, in
the whole course of my experience I never knew of a boy having the
audacity--at least it is extremely rare," said the doctor, somewhat
abruptly breaking the thread of his sentence. For he suddenly
remembered, conscientious man, that when an Eton boy himself he had
committed a similar offence for the purpose of visiting the Windsor
theatre. "Suppose that in consequence of your example the custom
spread, and the boys of Weston took to escaping from their rooms at
night and careering about the country like--" He was going to say like
rabbits, but the name of the master who had detected the offender
occurred to him, and dreading the suspicion of making a joke he changed
it to--"jackals, howling jackals." "Have you been in the habit of these
evasions?"

"Oh, no, sir!" cried Tom, encouraged by something in the doctor's tones
to speak out. "I never thought of such a thing till last night, just as
I was going to bed. But the moon was so bright, and the bar was so
loose, and the ice bears such a short time, and I take so much longer
than others to learn anything, and I was so anxious to get perfect on
the outside edge, that I gave way to the temptation. It was very wrong,
and I am very sorry, and will take care nothing of the sort ever happens
again."

"So will I," said the doctor drily. "These bars shall be looked to.
And who went with you?"

"No one, sir, no one else knew of it. I just took my skates and went.
I did not see how wrong it was, sir, then, as I do now. I am slow, sir,
and can only think of one thing at a time."

"And the outside edge engrossed all your faculties, I suppose."

"Yes, sir."

Dr Jolliffe would have given something to let him off, but felt that he
could not; to do so would be such a severe blow to discipline. So he
set his features into the sternest expression he could assume, and said,
"Come into my class-room after eleven-o'clock school."

"Yes, sir," replied Buller, retiring with a feeling of relief; he was to
get off with a flogging after all, an