Eric blushed, hesitated--but at last, amid a dead silence, took up the book. Mr Gordon looked at it for a minute, let it fall on the ground, and then, with an unnecessary affectation of disgust, took it up with the tongs, and dropped it into the grate. There was a titter round the room. "Silence!" thundered the master; "this is no matter for laughing. So, sir, _this_ is the way you get up to the top of the form?" "I wasn't using it, sir," said Eric. "Not using it. Why, I saw you put it, open, under your Homer." "It isn't mine, sir." "Then whose is it?" Mr Gordon, motioning to Eric to pick up the book, looked at the fly-leaf, but of course no name was there; in those days it was dangerous to write one's name in a translation. Eric was silent. "Under the circumstances, Williams, I must punish you," said Mr Gordon. "Of course I am _bound_ to believe you, but the circumstances are very suspicious. You had no business with such a book at all. Hold out your hand." As yet Eric had never been caned. It would have been easy for him in this case to clear himself without mentioning names, but (very rightly) he thought it unmanly to clamour about being punished, and he felt nettled at Mr Gordon's merely official belief of his word. He knew that he had his faults, but certainly want of honour was not among them. Indeed, there were only three boys out of the twenty in the form who did not resort to modes of unfairness far worse than the use of cribs, and those three were--Russell, Owen, and himself; even Duncan, even Montagu, inured to it by custom, were not ashamed to read their lesson off a concealed book, or copy a date from a furtive piece of paper. They would have been ashamed of it before they came to Roslyn School, but the commonness of the habit had now made them blind or indifferent to its meanness. It was peculiarly bad in the fourth-form, because the master treated them with implicit confidence, and being scrupulously honourable himself, was unsuspicious of others. He was therefore extremely indignant at this apparent discovery of an attempt to overreach him in a boy so promising and so much of a favourite as Eric Williams. "Hold out your hand," he repeated. Eric did so, and the cane tingled sharply across his palm. He could bear the pain well enough, but he was keenly alive to the disgrace; he, a boy at the head of his form, to be caned in this way by a man who didn't understand him, and unjustly too! He mustered up an indifferent air, closed his lips tight, and determined to give no further signs. The defiance of his look made Mr Gordon angry, and he inflicted in succession five hard cuts on either hand, each one of which was more excruciating than the last. "Now, go to your seat."