“I knowed it was them! I knowed it couldn’t be nobody but them!” broke forth old Ketch, summarily interrupting the proceedings. “You sees now, sir, what incorrigible--” “Silence!” said the master, raising his hand. “I can deal with this without your assistance, Ketch. Hurst, who concocted this infamous plot?” Hurst--who was the senior of the conspirators, with regard to his position in the school, though not so old as Pierce senior--could not answer it definitively. It was concocted between them, he said; not by one more than by another. “Did you not know that a trick, such as this, has deprived _men_ of reason?” continued the master. “And you play it upon a young and defenceless boy! I am at a loss how to express my sense of your conduct. If any ill shall have happened to him through it, you will carry it on your consciences for ever.” Remembering what they had just heard, the boys’ consciences had begun to suffer already. “Who personated the ghost?” continued the master. “Pierce senior.” The answer came from Simms. The others would not have given it. “I might have guessed that,” was the remark of the master, who had no great love for the gentleman named. “I might have known that if there was a boy in the college school who would delight to put himself forward to trample on one younger and more sensitive than himself, it would be Pierce senior. I’ll give you something to remember this work by, Mr. Pierce. Yorke!” Gerald Yorke knew what he was called for. He was the tallest and strongest of all. The school knew also; and a murmur of excitement went round. Pierce senior was going to be hoisted. Only in very flagrant cases was the extreme punishment of flogging resorted to by the present master. It had been more common with his predecessor. Of course its rarity made it all the more impressive when it did come. “Make ready,” said the master to Pierce senior, unlocking his desk, and taking out a birch as big as a besom. Pierce turned green and white, without help from any blue flame, and slowly began to obey. There might be no resistance. The school hushed itself into suspense, and Mr. Ketch’s legs were on the point of taking a dance of ecstasy. A minute or two, and the group formed the centre of the upper part of the room. Yorke supported the great boy whose back was bared, while the daunted faces and eager eyes were strained eagerly from around. The head-master took his place, and his birch was raised in the air to come down with a heavy stroke, when a commotion was heard at one of the desks, and Stephen Bywater rushed forward. “Stop, sir!” he said to the master. “If you will let Pierce go, I will take the punishment.” The master’s arm with its weapon dropped by his side, and he turned his astonished gaze upon Bywater.