Whitehead, who sat at the bottom of one of the tables, to stop talking.
At the end of tea the guests filed out of the room.

The headmaster stood up and rapped on his table with a knife.

"The whole school," he said, "will come to the library in ten minutes'
time."

The boys left the dining-room. They began to whisper to one another with
bated breath. "What's the matter?" And the boys of the second division
shook their heads ominously, and pointing to Gordon, Smith, and Hart,
said: "You're in for it this time!" The boys of the first division were
too important to take any notice of the rest of the school, and retired
to the first division school-room in dignified silence.

Ten minutes later the whole school was assembled in the library, from
which one flight of stairs led to the upper storeys. The staircase was
shrouded from view by a dark curtain hanging from a Gothic arch; it was
through this curtain that the headmaster used dramatically to appear on
important occasions, and it was up this staircase that boys guilty of
cardinal offences were led off to corporal punishment.

The boys waited in breathless silence. Acute suspense was felt by the
whole school, but by none so keenly as by Gordon, Smith, and Hart minor.
These three little boys felt perfectly sick with fear of the unknown and
the terror of having in some unknown way made themselves responsible for
the calamity which would perhaps vitally affect the whole school.

Presently a rustle was heard, and the headmaster swept down the
staircase and through the curtain, robed in the black silk gown of an