Still nothing had been _said_ on the subject as yet; and every guilty heart among those 250 boys beat fast lest _his_ sin too should have been discovered, and he should be called out for some public and heavy punishment.
The hour arrived.

The boys thronging into the great school-room, took their places according to their respective forms.

The masters in their caps and gowns were all seated on a small semicircular bench at the upper end of the room, and in the centre of them, before a small table, sate Dr.Rowlands.
The sound of whispering voices sank to a dead and painful hush.

The blood was tingling consciously in many cheeks, and not even a breath could be heard in the deep expectation of that anxious and solemn moment.
Dr.Rowlands spread before him the list of the school, and said, "I shall first read out the names of the boys in the first-fifth, and upper-fourth forms." This was done to ascertain formally whether the boys were present on whose account the meeting was convened; and it at once told Eric and Wildney that _they_ were the boys to be punished, and that the others had escaped.
The names were called over, and an attentive observer might have told, from the sound of the boys' voices as they answered, which of them were afflicted with a troubled conscience.
Another slight pause, and breathless hush.
"Eric Williams and Charles Wildney, stand forward." The boys obeyed.

From his place in the fifth, where he was sitting with his head propped on his hand, Eric rose and advanced; and Wildney, from the other end of the room, where the younger boys sat, getting up, came and stood by his side.
Both of them fixed their eyes on the ground, whence they never once raised them; and in the deadly pallor of their haggard faces, you could scarcely have recognized the joyous high-spirited friends, whose laugh and shout had often rung so merrily through the play-ground, and woke the echoes of the rocks along the shore.