"Yes, sir! He said—I lost a slate-pencil.'"
"Is the boy present?"
"Yes, sir."
"I shall take it as a favor if he will rise."
Ever since Lionel began to speak, Frank's mind had been in a tumult. It was his first impulse to get up and indignantly deny that he had seen the chain; but then he must explain why he was in that place and what he had been searching for. This he was too proud to do, and now he sat still, painfully embarrassed.
This, of course, confirmed Lionel in his opinion that he had picked up the chain and concealed it.
Mr. Monks waited a few moments for the boy to rise, then said kindly:
"I do not believe I have one pupil who would willfully keep a chain found under such circumstances. Though the article was very valuable from having been the gift of a friend, now deceased, yet I would far rather lose it, than to suspect one who was not guilty. If any of you have a word to tell me in private, I shall remain in my desk half an hour after school."
When the scholars were dismissed, Lionel, with a hesitating glance at Frank, who stood, cap in hand, in the entry, walked straight up the aisle to the platform.
Frank, who had almost resolved to confide his explanation to his teacher, who was also his mother's and his own best friend, stopped short on seeing this, and saying to himself, "I can tell him better at home," was rushing away, when he heard the words: