One day, during the mid-day meal, his father examined his sister's wine-flask. It was empty.
"Who has drunk the wine?" he asked, looking round the circle. No one answered, but John blushed.
"It is you, then," said his father.
John, who had never noticed where the wine-flask was hidden, burst into tears and sobbed, "I didn't drink the wine."
"Then you lie too. When dinner is over, you will get something."
The thought of what he would get when dinner was over, as well as the continued remarks about "John's secretiveness," caused his tears to flow without pause. They rose from the table.
"Come here," said his father, and went into the bedroom. His mother followed. "Ask father for forgiveness," she said. His father had taken out the stick from behind the looking-glass.
"Dear papa, forgive me!" the innocent child exclaimed. But now it was too late. He had confessed the theft, and his mother assisted at the execution. He howled from rage and pain, but chiefly from a sense of humiliation. "Ask papa now for forgiveness," said his mother.
The child looked at her and despised her. He felt lonely, deserted by her to whom he had always fled to find comfort and compassion, but so seldom justice. "Dear papa, forgive," he said, with compressed and lying lips.
And then he stole out into the kitchen to Louise the nursery-maid, who used to comb and wash him, and sobbed his grief out in her apron.