"Wolferstan, I distinctly saw you upset that blackboard with a movement
of your hand--one hundred lines. Go quietly from the room, everybody."

The meeting dispersed.

"Jackson and Wilson, come here. What's the meaning of this disgraceful
conduct? Put that dog out of the room, Jackson."

Mike removed the yelling Sammy and shut the door on him.

"Well, Wilson?"

"Please, sir, I was playing with a clockwork rat--"

"What business have you to be playing with clockwork rats?"

"Then I remembered," said Mike, "that I had left my Horace in my desk,
so I came in--"

"And by a fluke, sir," said Wilson, as one who tells of strange things,
"the rat happened to be pointing in the same direction, so he came
in, too."

"I met Sammy on the gravel outside and he followed me."

"I tried to collar him, but when you told me to come in, sir, I had to
let him go, and he came in after the rat."

It was plain to Mr. Downing that the burden of sin was shared equally by