The boy paused for a moment, out of breath, still clutching the table desperately. Mr. Roylston tried but could not speak. A thousand emotions stung him to the quick; and deep within, there was a sense, outrageous as was this attack, that he was at the bar of an avenging justice, paying with bitter humiliation for the lack of charity of which the boy’s wild words convicted him. At last he found his voice, but he was still under the spell of the strange situation. “I will tolerate this extraordinary conversation a moment longer. Why have you so viciously hated me?” “Why—because you are cruel,” cried Finch, recovering himself, “because you are pitiless, because you do wicked, unkind things in the name of justice. Yes, yes, you shall have it all. You have never given me one chance, and you were glad—_glad_ to-day when you thought you had caught me at last. You are always suspecting, suspecting evil—until at last your suspicions find it or create it. You have scared me, hurt me, hounded me—I don’t know how you do it, but you do do it—and, thank God, you’ll never do it again. Of course, you’ll have me fired now, I know that, and I don’t care. And I deserve to be. I ain’t fit to be here. But it’s you as much as anyone else that’s kept me from being fit. I am just full of hate and malice. Don’t I know it? Don’t I suffer from it?” “Aside from my severity—or my cruelty, as you are pleased to call it,—for what else do you blame me?” “Above all,” cried Finch, and a note of exultation rang in his voice, “above all for the way you’ve treated Anthony Deering. I know him, and he is the soul of honor, he has a heart. You or I aren’t fit to unlace his boots. You kept him from getting what he deserved—the Head Prefectship.” “Deering told you that?” “No, Deering didn’t tell me that. Deering’s not that sort, don’t you know it, can’t you believe it? He isn’t a sneak; but I am; and I listened under the windows of the faculty room the night you spoke against him, the first night of this year. And what had he done against you except what half the fellows do to most of the masters more or less all the time? But you wouldn’t forgive him, though he was fool enough to be sorry for what he had done, for making fun of you. But you couldn’t be kind. I listened—I heard it all. You saved that paper, and bided your time, that’s what you did—waited your chance to get even. Do you know that many a night I’ve laid in bed and prayed for courage to get up and come over and do some terrible thing to you. I’ve actually wanted to kill you. But I don’t want to now. The bitterest medicine you can take is to have, for once in your life, some one else, though it’s only a worthless rotten chap like me, tell you to your face that you are cruel and unkind and that he despises you.” At last Finch stopped. He was trembling violently, his cheeks were blazing, his eyes feverish and wild, but his soul was filled with a sense of triumph.