Masters, however, are pleased to imagine that a pact has been signed between the schoolboy and themselves which binds the schoolboy to confess to any fault he may have committed, and to answer any leading questions that may be put to him. The schoolboy does not look on things in this light. He knows that there is no such agreement. There are certain things he wants to do, the doing of which, if known, will render him liable to punishment. When the wish to do these overrides the fear of punishment he takes all reasonable precautions to avoid detection, and proceeds to break the inconvenient rule. It is up to the master to find him out. If the master came down to the dining-hall one evening and said: 'Now, look here, there have been complaints that some fellows, I don't say you, but fellows in the school, have been getting out at night and going down to the Eversham Arms. If any one of you here has been getting out at night, I want him to come to my study afterwards and tell me.' If a house master were to do that, the guilty one would not feel himself under the least compunction to own up. He has run a big risk in getting out of the boothole window at half-past eleven. It was up to the master to catch him then. If a form master were to call a member of his form aside and say to him: 'Jones, last term you were bottom of the form; this term you have reached single figures. Last term you had to write me a hundred lines nearly every time I put you on to construe; this term you have not failed once. I cannot understand it. Are you working honestly?' Jones would reply: 'Yes, sir.' He would not feel that he was telling a lie. He would feel, on the other hand, that his form master had taken an unfair advantage of him in putting him a leading question. No one thinks a murderer lies because he says, 'Not guilty, my lord.' It is the law of England that the Crown has to prove the defendant guilty. A schoolboy considers himself entitled to the same rights as the murderer and the thief. A master has to find him out. And it is quite absurd to say that a boy's soul is going to suffer because of the secrecy he imposes on himself in the course of a romantic friendship. There are a lot of things that a boy is not anxious that his house master should know, and of which no one could expect him to be ashamed. To smuggle into the dormitory a chicken, a loaf of bread, and a pound of cheese in preparation for a midnight feast is a natural and, according to one's point of view, a worthy act; but it is not a performance the success of which one would be in a hurry to confide in one's house master. When a schoolboy deceives a master he does not feel he is deceiving an individual, but an impersonal body. In the same way do we call the grocer's attention to the omission of a pound of butter on our weekly books, but skilfully conceal from the income-tax assessor a number of interesting facts. A lie is hardly a lie if the person telling it does not consider it so.