“If you make me cry out again,” said the boy, in a slow and quiet voice, “it is my intention to kill you.”
All stood gaping with amazement and horror, and the boy’s face was so strange that at first none ventured to come near him. At last the oldest boy in the school, who was also the boldest, crept round behind him cautiously, swooped upon him and pinioned his arms. There and then, with the knife still in his hand, they dragged him into the presence of the master.
The old man, very infirm and half blind as he was, could not understand their clamour at first. But when that which had occurred was rendered clear to him, he ordered every boy to his place. Then addressing the heavy boy with red hair, he said, “Come to me, Enceladus.”
A deep silence, the fruit of curiosity, was maintained while this boy lurched up to the master’s table. He wore a smirk of satisfaction upon his face, as one who, unaccustomed to notoriety, has come to taste it suddenly.
“Enceladus,” said the aged master, in so sorrowful a voice that it sank into the hearts even of those who were accustomed to heed it least, “you are rude and unmannerly. Take up your books and leave us. Never, upon any pretext, must you come among us again.”
The boy with red hair, insensitive and slow-witted as he was, was as if stunned by this public and totally unexpected humiliation.
“Why, sir,” he whimpered, “why, sir, it was not I who drew the knife.”
A burning sense of injustice caused the head boy of the school to rise in his place. He it was who had pinioned the arms of him who had dared to hold such a weapon.
“No, sir,” he cried, “it was not Enceladus who drew the knife; it was Achilles.”
“Mnestheus,” said the aged master, addressing the head boy with a stern melancholy that none had heard on his lips before, “you are declared unworthy of that office to which you have been called. You also, here and now, must go from among us, and never, Mnestheus, must you come among us again.”