"
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.
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