‘Fighting like bullies!’ he said. ‘I thought my pupils were gentlemen at least!’ Perhaps dimly aware that he had himself given some occasion to this outbreak, and imagining in his heart a show of justice, he seized Home by the collar, and gave him a terrible cut with the riding-whip which he had caught up in his anger. Home cried out, and the same moment Charley appeared, pale as death. ‘Oh, sir!’ he said, laying his hand on the master’s arm appealingly, ‘I was to blame too.’ ‘I don’t doubt it,’ returned Mr Forest. ‘I shall settle with you presently. Get away!’ ‘Now, sir,’ he continued, turning to me--and held the whip suspended, as if waiting a word from me to goad him on. He looked something else than a gentleman himself just then. It was a sudden outbreak of the beast in him. ‘Will you tell me why you punish me, sir, if you please? What have I done?’ I said. His answer was such a stinging blow that for a moment I was bewildered, and everything reeled about me. But I did not cry out--I know that, for I asked two of the fellows after. ‘You prate about justice!’ he said. ‘I will let you know what justice means--to you at least.’ And down came a second cut as bad as the first. My blood was up. ‘If this is justice, then there _is_ no God,’ I said. He stood aghast. I went on. ‘If there be a God--’ ‘_If_ there be a God!’ he shrieked, and sprang towards me. I did not move a step. ‘I hope there is,’ I said, as he seized me again; ‘for you are unjust.’ I remember only a fierce succession of blows. With Voltaire and the French revolution present to his mind in all their horror, he had been nourishing in his house a toad of the same spawn! He had been remiss, but would now compel those whom his neglect had injured to pay off his arrears! A most orthodox conclusion! but it did me little harm: it did not make me think that God was unjust, for my uncle, not Mr Forest, was my type of Christian. The harm it did was of another sort--and to Charley, not to me. Of course, while under the hands of the executioner, I could not observe what was going on around me. When I began to awake from the absorption of my pain and indignation, I found myself in my room. I had been ordered thither, and had mechanically obeyed. I was on my bed, staring at the door, at which I had become aware of a gentle tapping. ‘Come in,’ I said; and Charley--who, although it was his room as much as mine, never entered when he thought I was there without knocking at the door--appeared, with the face of a dead man. Sore as I was, I jumped up. ‘The brute has not been thrashing _you_, Charley!’ I cried, in a wrath that gave me the strength of a giant. With that terrible bruise above his temple from Home’s fist, none but a devil could have dared to lay hands upon him! ‘No, Wilfrid,’ he answered; ‘no such honour for me! I am disgraced for ever!’ He hid his wan face in his thin hands. ‘What do you mean, Charley?’ I said. ‘You cannot have told a lie!’