"Don't answer me, sir!" cried Mr. Mustard; "how dare you? Bring me the long cane!" 

 "But, please, sir, I——" 

 "Thomas Bottle, your punishment is doubled!" shouted the master, bringing the pointer down across Tommy's legs, as a kind of "lick and a promise."  He needn't. Tommy knew well enough what was coming. 

 "If you please, Mr. Mustard," I called out, "it was me that sold Tommy's father that pair of boots this morning in my father's shop, so Tommy couldn't have broken your flowerpots last night, with these boots on his feet!" 

 "Eh, what!" cried the master, turning upon me; "well, Tommy is excused. But the rest——" 

 The others provided with our sixes were, to wit, Frederick Allen, Widow Allen's boy; Bob Grey, Eben Pringle, and Dorky Cobb—all poor boys. 

 But before punishment began I put my own before the master's eyes. They were number sixes. 

 "If you punish Fred and Bob and Eben and Dorky, you must whip me, too, Mr. Mustard," I said.  "And I shall have to tell my father, and he won't like it, because nobody will come any more to our shop to buy boots, if they are to be punished for it at school!" 

 I always called him Mr. Mustard, because I was the only boy in the school who dared do it, and I knew he hated it. But, you see, he was afraid of my father. Most people in Breckonside were afraid of my father. 

 So I got them off at that time; but presently the master welted Bob Grey for making a noise, though he knew perfectly well it was I who had done it. And the lesson was not over before he had got even with the lot of them—Fred and Eben and Dorky and all—except me, of course. 

 I was always first on my bench; and that was the highest in the school. You see, I wore the best coat, and Mr. Mustard got all his provisions, his stationery, his coals, his bacon from my father's shop; and he was supposed to settle his account once a year. He gave my father a little honey in exchange, when it was the time to draw the sections off from the hives, but he never paid very much money. 

 So I could stay away from school when I liked, and so long as my father did not find out, no harm ever came. Mr. Mustard never asked a question. He took it for granted that I had been sent somewhere to look after some of my father's little businesses. The boys knew this, and used 

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