"And didn't he engage in a fight with the watchman, and, taking advantage of a mean trick, sneak to his room? Didn't he, I ask you?"
"I presume the watchman has correctly informed you of what happened."
Tom's voice was coldly indifferent now, and the proctor recognized that fact.
"He did," he snapped. "And you know of it, too. I expected you to tell me that."
"Since when has it been a college rule," asked Tom, "to confess to the doings of another student? I thought that all that was required of me was to report my own infraction of the rules."
Tom knew that he was right and that the proctor had no authority to ask him concerning the doings of Langridge, and the proctor knew that he himself was in the wrong, which knowledge, shared as it was by a student, did not add to his good temper.
"Then you refuse to say who was with you?" he snapped, his eyes fixed on Tom's face.
"I certainly refuse to inform on a fellow student, Mr. Zane," was Tom's answer, "and I don't think you have any right to ask me to do so."
If he had stopped with his first half of the reply all might have been well, for certainly the proctor did not expect Tom or any other student to be a tale-bearer, though he always asked them to speak in order to make more easy his own task. But to
