"You can't? Why not, Mr. Prescott?" demanded the principal.
Again the principal launched his most compelling look.
"Because, sir," answered Dick, quietly, and in a tone in which no sign of disrespect could be detected, "it would strike me as being dishonorable to drag others into this affair."
"You would consider it dishonorable?" cried Mr. Cantwell, his face again turning deathly white with inward rage. "You, who admit having had a big hand in what was really an outrage?"
But Dick met and returned the other's gaze composedly.
"The Board of Education, Mr. Cantwell, has several times decided that one pupil in the public schools cannot be compelled by a teacher to bear tales that implicate another student. I have admitted my own share in the joke that has so much displeased you, but I cannot name any others."
"You must!" insisted the principal, rising swiftly from his chair.
"I regret to have to say, sir," responded Prescott, quietly, "that I shall not do it. If you make it necessary, I shall have to take refuge behind the rulings of the Board of Education on that point."
Mr. Cantwell glared at Dick, but the latter still met the gaze unflinchingly.
Then the principal began to feel his wrath rising to such a point that he found himself threatened with an angry outburst. As his temper had often betrayed him before in life, Mr. Cantwell, pointing angrily to Dick's place, said: