opular act. We had a
young usher whom we disliked. I suppose, poor half-starved
phthisic lad, that he was the most miserable of us all. He was, I
think, unfitted for the task which had been forced upon him; he
was fretful, unsympathetic, agitated. The school-house, an old
rambling place, possessed a long cellar-like room that opened
from our general corridor and was lighted by deep windows,
carefully barred, which looked into an inner garden. This vault
was devoted to us and to our play-boxes: by a tacit law, no
master entered it. One evening, just at dusk, a great number of
us were here when the bell for night-school rang, and many of us
dawdled at the summons. Mr. B., tactless in his anger, bustled in
among us, scolding in a shrill voice, and proceeded to drive us
forth. I was the latest to emerge, and as he turned away to see
if any other truant might not be hiding, I determined upon
action. With a quick movement, I drew the door behind me and
bolted it, just in time to hear the imprisoned usher scream with
vexation. We boys all trooped upstairs and it is characteristic
of my isolation that I had not one 'chum' to whom I could confide
my feat.

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 s