“Is this your book, boy?” he said sternly, holding up gingerly a well-thumbed copy of Scott’s “Monastery.”
“No, sir, it does not belong to me.”
“Yet it was found in your desk. Have you been reading it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Um, just so; and where do you get such books, pray?”
So long as my answers would only involve myself, I was quite prepared to reply; but now I was silent.
“Did you hear my question, Alan Gray? I said—Where did you get such books?”
Not a word came from me to break the dread silence. Many years have flown since that day, but I can yet see the storm of passion that swept over the master’s face as he spoke. A volcano slumbered within him, which he tried to suppress. He was a hard, severe man, was The Reverend Archibald Angus. A Presbyterian of the old school, he had no sympathy with the natural love of a boy for all that was legendary and romantic, and could not brook the idea of any pupil of his daring to read such unhallowed literature, as he believed all novels to be. A strict disciplinarian, he demanded the most abject submission to his authority, and had no mercy for anyone who dared to thwart his will. Theologically and socially he was narrow and crabbed, and his system of teaching, if system it could be called, was tyrannical in the extreme.
During the mid-day recess a tell-tale had volunteered the information that I had been reading a book which was not a class book. Mr. Angus had gone to my desk and, on ransacking it, had found a copy of “The Monastery,” which he had promptly confiscated.
“Have I not forbidden you to read novels? And yet you persist in even bringing your fictitious rubbish here! But you shall not defy my authority. You must be made an example of. Hold up your hand.”