Afternoon school began. A dull, weary afternoon, with inward dissatisfaction reigning. Mr. Henry called up the second desk, and found his pupils careless and troublesome, bordering on insubordination. He promised them punishment if they did not attend better. Master Dick Loftus especially was as scornfully insolent as he dared be. Not very long after they were sent back to their places, Dick lifted the lid of his desk, and fished up a rotten apple. "Onions, see here. I've a great mind to shy it at him." Onions glanced round the room; he enjoyed mischief as much as Dick, and was heartily hating and despising Mr. Henry: having nothing of the sneak in his own disposition, he could not tolerate it in others. "You'll be seen, Dick. Old Jebb's eyes are rolling about." "They always are, and be hanged to him, when Brabazon's away!" exclaimed Smart from the other side of Dick, as resentfully as if the rolling of the Reverend Mr. Jebb's eyes were a personal affront. Presently the opportunity came; Dick raised the apple, carefully took aim, and sent it flying. Good aim, for it struck the cheek of Mr. Henry, making on it a great dash and splash, as it is in the nature of a rotten apple to do. But, unfortunately, at the very moment of Dick's giving an impetus to the missile, Mr. Henry happened to raise his eyes; he saw the deliberate aim, saw the throw, and Dick knew that he saw it. The whole room was aroused. "Who did that?" cried out Mr. Baker, in a passion. "He shall have a good caning, whoever it was." Nobody answered. The second desk especially, bending attentively over their books, looked up in innocent surprise. "Who did it, I ask?" roared Mr. Baker, a choleric man, beginning to talk fast and furiously, and to cane his table as kindly as if it had been a boy's back. In the midst, in walked the Head Master. As he took his place the noise sunk to a calm. "Did you see who flung the apple, Mr. Henry?" inquired the Master, when he was made cognizant of the cause of uproar he had come upon: and his quiet voice of authority presented a contrast to Mr. Baker's. Involuntarily, as it were, and for a moment only, Mr. Henry's glance met Dick's. Something like shame for the act, something like a piteous appeal for silence, went out of Dick's eyes. It is so very different, you see—the accomplishing a little thing of this sort with impunity, and the being caught in the act. Mr. Henry, replying to the Head Master, said it might have been an accident, and finished wiping his face with his handkerchief. A nice mess the cambric was in. "Accident or no accident, the boy shall be punished if I can discover him," returned the doctor. "Can't you tell who flung it?"