l mumbling over his book, without getting
on, when the master's awful voice was heard, calling up before him Lamb,
little Proctor, and Holt. All three started, and turned red; so that the
school concluded them guilty before it was known what they were charged
with. Dale knew,--and he alone; and very sorry he was, for the intimacy
between Hugh and him had grown very close indeed since Saturday.

The master was considerate towards the younger boys. He made Lamb tell
the whole. Even when the cowardly lad "bellowed" (as his school-fellows
called his usual mode of crying) so that nothing else could be heard,
Mr. Tooke waited, rather than question the other two. When the whole
story was extracted, in all its shamefulness, from Lamb's own lips, the
master expressed his disgust. He said nothing about the money part of
it--about how Hugh was to be paid. He probably thought it best for the
boys to take the consequences of their folly in losing their money. He
handed the little boys over to Mr. Carnaby to be caned--"To make them
remember," as he said; though they themselves were pretty sure they
should never forget. Lamb was kept to be punished by the master himself.
Though Lamb knew he should be severely flogged, and though he was the
most cowardly boy in the school, he did not suffer so much as Hugh did
in the prospect of being caned--being punished at all. Phil, who knew
his brother's face well, saw, as he passed down the room, how miserable
he was--too miserable to cry; and Phil pulled him by the sleeve, and
whispered that being caned was nothing to mind--only a stroke or two
across the shoulders. Hugh shook his head, as much as to say, "It is not
that."

No--it was not the pain. It was the being punished in open school, and
when he did not feel that he deserved it. How should he know where Lamb
was taking him? How should he know that the ginger-beer was to be paid
for, and that he was to pay? He felt himself injured enough already; and
now to be punished in addition! He would have died on the spot for
liberty to tell Mr. Tooke and everybody what he thought of the way he
was treated. He had felt his mother hard sometimes; but what had she
ever done to him compared with this? It was well he thought of his
mother. At the first moment, the picture of home in his mind nearly made
him cry--the thing of all others he most wished to avoid while so many
eyes were on him; but the remembrance of what his mother expected of
him--her loo