Arthur Channing looked inquiringly at Gaunt. The latter tossed his head haughtily. “Roland Yorke must have made some mistake,” he observed to Arthur. “It is perfectly out of the question that the master can suspect a senior. I can’t imagine where the school could have picked up the notion.”
Gaunt was standing with Arthur, as he spoke, and the three seniors, Channing, Huntley, and Yorke, happened to be in a line facing them. Arthur regarded them one by one. “You don’t look very like committing such a thing as that, any one of you,” he laughed. “It is curious where the notion can have come from.”
“Such absurdity!” ejaculated Gerald Yorke. “As if it were likely Pye would suspect one of us seniors! It’s not credible.”
“Not at all credible that you would do it,” said Arthur. “Had it been the result of accident, of course you would have hastened to declare it, any one of you three.”
As Arthur spoke, he involuntarily turned his eyes on the sea of faces behind the three seniors, as if searching for signs in some countenance among them, by which he might recognize the culprit.
“My goodness!” uttered the senior boy, to Arthur. “Had any one of those three done such a thing—accident or no accident—and not declared it, he’d get his name struck off the rolls. A junior may be pardoned for things that a senior cannot.”
“Besides, there’d be the losing his chance of the seniorship, and of the exhibition,” cried one from the throng of boys in the rear.
“How are you progressing for the seniorship?” asked Arthur, of the three. “Which of you stands the best chance?”
“I think Channing does,” freely spoke up Harry Huntley.
“Why?”