“Don’t call upon me,” replied Tom, stolidly. “I decline to interfere with Mr. Yorke; for, or against him.”
“It is his bottle, and he had it that morning; and I say that I think he must have broken it over the surplice,” persisted Bywater, with as much noise as he dared display in the presence of the master. “Otherwise, how should a piece out of the bottle be lying on the surplice?”
The master came to the conclusion that the facts were tolerably conclusive. He touched Yorke. “Speak the truth, boy,” he said, with a tone that seemed to imply he rather doubted Gerald’s strict adherence to truth at all times and seasons.
Gerald turned crusty. “I don’t know anything about it, sir. Won’t I pummel you for this!” he concluded, in an undertone, to Bywater.
“Besides that, sir,” went on Bywater, pushing Gerald aside with his elbow, as if he were nobody: “Charles Channing, I say, saw something that led him to suspect Gerald Yorke. I am certain he did. I think it likely that he saw him fling the bottle away, after doing the mischief. Yorke knows that I have given him more than one chance to get out of this. If he had only told me in confidence that it was he who did it, whether by accident or mischief, I’d have let it drop.”
“Yorke,” said the master, leaning his face forward and speaking in an undertone, “do you remember what I promised the boy who did this mischief? Not for the feat itself, but for braving me, when I ordered him to speak out, and he would not.”
Yorke grew angry and desperate. “Let it be proved against me, sir, if you please, before you punish. I don’t think even Bywater, rancorous as he is, can prove me guilty.”
At this moment, who should walk forward but Mr. Bill Simms, much to the astonishment of the head-master, and of the school in general. Since Mr. Simms’s confession to the master, touching the trick played on Charles Channing, he had not led the most agreeable of lives. Some of the boys treated him with silent contempt, some worried his life out of him, and all hated him. He could now enjoy a little bit of retaliation on one of them, at any rate.
“Please, sir, the day the surplice was inked, I saw Gerald Yorke come out of the college just before afternoon service, and chuck a broken ink-bottle over into the burial-ground.”
“You saw it!” exclaimed the master, while Gerald turned his livid face, his flashing eye on the young tell-tale.