His conscience clearly condemned him for his fight with the master, and yet, somehow he could not regret having stood up for Jimmie and taken his punishment.

He expected no mercy at his father's hands next morning.

The punishment he knew would be cruel enough, but it was not the pain that Thomas was dreading; he was dimly struggling with the sense of outrage, for ever since the moment he had stood up and uttered his challenge to the master, he had felt himself to be different.

That moment now seemed to belong to the distant years when he was a boy, and now he could not imagine himself submitting to a flogging from any man, and it seemed to him strange and almost impossible that even his father should lift his hand to him.
"You are not sleeping, Thomas," said his mother, going up to his bunk.
"No, mother." "And you have had no supper at all." "I don't want any, mother." The mother sat silent beside him for a time, and then said, quietly, "You did not tell me, Thomas." "No, mother, I didn't like." "It would have been better that your father should have heard this from--I mean, should have heard it at home.

And--you might have told me, Thomas." "Yes, mother, I wish now I had.