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Title: The Human Boy

Author: Eden Phillpotts

Release Date: March 2, 2017 [EBook #54270]

Language: English

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                             THE HUMAN BOY




                                   BY

                            EDEN PHILLPOTTS

                    AUTHOR OF “CHILDREN OF THE MIST”
                       “FOLLY AND FRESH AIR” ETC.




[Illustration]





                      HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
                          NEW YORK AND LONDON
                                  1900




                                   TO

                           PHILLPOTTS “MINOR”

               AS A TRIFLING TRIBUTE OF FRATERNAL REGARD
                  AND IN GREEN AND GRATEFUL MEMORY OF

                           OUR HAPPY BOYHOOD




                                CONTENTS

                                                              PAGE

     THE ARTFULNESS OF STEGGLES                                  1

     THE PROTEST OF THE WING DORMITORY                          23

     “FRECKLES” AND “FRENCHY”                                   47

     CONCERNING CORKEY MINIMUS                                  69

     THE PIEBALD RAT                                            94

     BROWNE, BRADWELL, AND ME                                  115

     GIDEON’S FRONT TOOTH                                      133

     THE CHEMISTRY CLASS                                       150

     DOCTOR DUNSTON’S HOWLER                                   171

     MORRANT’S HALF-SOV                                        202

     THE BUCKENEERS                                            226

                             The Human Boy




                       The Artfulness of Steggles


                                   I

I remember the very evening he came to Merivale. “Nubby” Tomkins had a
cold on his chest, so Mathers and I stopped in from the half-hour
“kick-about” in the playground before tea, being chums of Nubby’s.
Whenever he gets a cold on the chest he thinks he is going to die, and
this evening, sitting by the fire in the Fifth’s class-room, he roasted
chestnuts for Mathers and me, and took a very gloomy view of his future
life.

“As you know,” he said, “I hate being out of doors excepting when I can
lie about in hay. And to make me go out walking in all weathers, as they
do here, is simply murder. I know what’ll be the end of it. I shall get
bacilluses or microbes into some important part of me, and die. It’s
like those books the Doctor reads to the kids on Sundays, with
choir-boys in them. The little brutes sing like angels, and their voices
go echoing to the top of cathedrals, and make people blub about in the
pews. Then they get microbes on the chest, and kick. You know the only
thing I can do is to sing; and I shall die as sure as mud.”

Nubby was a corker at singing. He had all the solos in the chapel to
himself, and people came miles to hear him.

“You won’t die,” said Mathers. “You don’t give your money away to the
poor, or help blind people across roads, and all that. Your voice’ll
crack, and you’ll live.”

“I wish it would,” said Nubby; “I should feel a lot safer.”

“Mine,” continued Mathers, “cracked when my mustache came.”

We looked at him as he patted it. Mathers was going next term. He had
more mustache than, at least, two of the under-masters, and once he let
Nubby stroke it, and Nubby said he could feel it distinctly under the
hand.

“That’s what’s done it with M.,” said Nubby, looking at Mathers and
opening another gloomy subject.

Mathers got redder, and began peeling a chestnut.

“I wish I was as certain as you,” he said.

“None of us can be certain,” I said; “but if your voice did go, Nubbs,
you’d be out of the hunt for one.”

“I am,” declared Nubby. “Last time I had a cold in the throat she sent
me a little bunch of grapes by Jane, and a packet of black currant
lozenges; but this time, though the attack is on my chest, and I may
die, she hasn’t sent a thing.”

“Perhaps she doesn’t know.”

“She does. I met her going into the library yesterday, and I doubled up
and barked like a dog, and she never even said she was sorry. It lies
between you two chaps now.”

“I believe you are going strongest just at present,” said Mathers,
critically, to me. “You came off last Wednesday and kicked two goals on
your own, and she said afterwards to Browne that she never saw you play
a bigger game. Then that little beast--Browne, I mean--sniggered, and
made that noise in his throat, like a sprung bat, and said he was quite
glad he hadn’t kept you in. That’s how he shows M. what a gulf there is
even between the Fifth and masters.”

“The bigger the gulf the better,” I said. “It would be rough on a decent
worm to put it second to Browne. In my opinion even a Double-First would
be nothing if he wore salmon-colored ties and elastic-sided boots; and
Browne isn’t a Double-First by long chalks. He can only teach the kids,
and his desk is well known to be crammed with cribs of every kind.”

In the matter of M., I may say at once that she was Milly, Doctor
Denham’s youngest daughter--twelve and a half, fair, blue eyes, and
jolly difficult to please. Somehow the Fifth always drew her most. The
Sixth were feeble beggars at that time. Two of the ten wore spectacles,
and one was going out to Africa as a missionary, and used to treat the
Fifth’s class-room as a sort of training-ground for preaching and doing
good. He was called Fulcher, and the spirit was willing in him, but the
flesh was flabby. We used to assegai him with stumps, and pretend to
scalp him and boil him and eat him. He said he should glory in martyrdom
really; and Nubbs, who knows a good deal about eating, used to write
recipes for cooking Fulcher, and post them to imaginary African kings.
But I should think that to be merely eaten is not martyrdom, properly
speaking. If it is, then everything we eat, down to periwinkles, must be
martyrs; which is absurd, like Euclid says.

Well, it got to be a settled idea at Merivale that M. cared, in a sort
of vague way, for either Nubby, or Mathers, or me, or all of us. The
situation was too uncertain for anything like real jealousy among us;
besides, we were chums, and had no objection to going shares in M.’s
regard. At football Mathers and I fought like demons for Merivale and
for M.’s good word; but any impression we might make was generally swept
away in chapel by Nubby when Sunday came. He could sing, mind you. It
was like cold water down your spine, and all from printed music.
Besides, he could be ill, which gave him a pull over Mathers and me, who
couldn’t. To look at, Nubby was nothing. He had big limbs, but they were
soft as sausages. If you punched him he didn’t bruise yellow and
afterwards black, but merely turned red and then white again. Mathers,
besides being captain of the First Footer eleven, had nigger hair, that
girls always go dotty about, and black eyes, and pretty nearly as much
mustache as eyebrow. As for me, my biceps were the biggest in the lower
school, which isn’t much, of course; but things like that tell with a
girl.

Then it was that conversation turned on Steggles. He was a new boy, due
that afternoon. Hardly had the name passed my lips when the door opened,
and the Doctor’s head appeared. The next moment a chap followed him.

“Ah! there are some of the fellows by the fire,” said the Doctor. “Is
that you, Tomkins? But I needn’t ask.”

“Yes, sir,” said Nubby, rising.

“You are ill-advised, Tomkins, to spend the greater part of your leisure
sitting, as you do, almost upon the hob. A constitutional weakness is
thereby increased. This is Steggles. You will have time for a little
conversation before tea.”

The Doctor disappeared, and Steggles came slowly down the room with his
hands in his pockets. There was nothing to indicate a new boy about him.
He had red rims to his eyes and a spot or two on his face, chiefly near
his nose and on his forehead; his hair was sandy, and he wore a gold
watch-chain.

“You’re called Steggles, aren’t you?” said Nubby, who was an awfully
civil chap in his manners.

“I am.”

“Well, I hope you’ll like Merivale.”

“Do you?”

“All right in summer-time when there’s hay. Hate it when I’m ill, which
I am now.”

“What can you do?” asked Mathers in his abrupt way.

“I can draw,” said Steggles.

“What?”

“Devils.”

“Do one,” said Mathers.

He got a piece of _Cambridge demi_ and a pen and ink. Then Steggles,
evidently anxious to please, sat down, and did as good a devil as ever I
saw. Nubby and I were greatly pleased.

“What else can you do?” said Mathers, as if such a power to draw devils
wasn’t as much as you could expect from one chap.

“I can smoke.”

“Cigarettes? So can anybody.”

“No; a pipe.”

“Oh! where did you learn that?”

“At Harrow.”

Then Steggles started like a guilty thing and put his hand over his
mouth--too late. A rumor we had heard was proved true.

“It would have been sure to get out, and I don’t care who knows it, for
that matter,” said Steggles, defiantly. “I had to leave there because I
didn’t know enough, and couldn’t get up higher in the school. I’m rather
backward through not being properly taught. The teaching at Harrow’s
simply cruel. Not but what I’ve taught myself a thing or two, mind you.
I’m fifteen.”

He looked at us out of his red-rimmed eyes, and put me in mind of a
ferret I’ve got at home. He might have been any age up to twenty, I
thought.

“Can you play anything?” asked Mathers.

“The piano.”

Mathers shivered and Nubby grew excited.

“So can I. We’ll do duets,” he said.

“If you like,” said Steggles.

Then the tea-bell rang.


                                   II

Whole books might be written about Steggles at Merivale. I heard
Thompson say, after he had been there a week, that it wasn’t what he
didn’t know had rendered it necessary for Steggles to leave Harrow, but
what he did know. Certainly he had a great deal of general information
about rum things. He got newspapers by post concerning sporting matters;
he knew an immense deal about dogs and horses; and Nubbs, who was a
judge, said his piano-playing surpassed his devil-drawing for sheer
brilliance. Yet, with all these accomplishments, he only managed to get
into the Fourth. As to his smoking, it was certainly wonderful. And he
ate things afterwards to hide the smell. He had a genius for wriggling
out of rows and for getting them up between other fellows. He loved to
look on at fighting and knew all the proper rules. On the whole he was
rather a beast, and, if it hadn’t been for Nubby, Mathers and I should
have barred him. But all I’m going to tell about now is the hideous
discovery of Steggles and M., and the thing that happened on the day of
the match with Buckland Grammar School.

M. had been very queer for a fortnight--queer, I mean, with all three of
us--which was unusual. Then, seeing how the cat had taken to jumping, I
tackled her one morning going through the hall to the Doctor’s study.

“How d’you like Steggles?” I said.

“Very well. He’s clever,” she said.

“He’s fifteen,” I said; “he ought to know something if he’s ever going
to. He’s only in the Fourth, anyway.”

“You’re jealous and so is Mathers,” she said.

“Jealous of a chap with ferret-eyes! Not likely,” I said.

“You are, though.”

“Not more than Nubbs and Mathers, anyway,” I said. “It’s off with the
old friends and on with the new, I suppose.”

“Steggles knows how to treat a girl. You might learn manners from him,
and so might the others,” she said.

“And also the piano, perhaps?”

“He plays beautifully.”

“Have you seen him play football?”

“No.”

“Lucky for you.”

“Football isn’t everything.”

“No, not since he came; I’ve noticed that.”

This bitter speech stung M., and her eyes jolly well flashed sparks.

“Nor singing either,” I went on. “Nubbs nearly burst himself last Sunday
in chapel; and all the time you were watching Steggles making a rabbit
with his pocket-handkerchief.”

“I’ll thank you not to interest yourself in me any more,” she said,
“either in chapel or out of it.”

“All right. I dare say I shall still live,” I said. “Does that remark
apply equally to Mathers and Nubby, or only to me?”

“To Mathers, yes,” she said. “He’s as bad as you are. Not to Nubbs.”

Then she went.

Well, there it stood. When I told them Mathers seemed to think I needn’t
have dragged him in, and Nubbs got clean above himself with hope, not
seeing that he was really just as much out of it as us. Of course we
chucked Steggles for good and all then, and told him what we thought of
him. That was when he said something about only the brave deserving the
fair, and Mathers made him sit down in a puddle for cheeking him in the
playground. Steggles’s eyes looked like one of his own devils while he
sat there, but he took it jolly quietly at the time. That got Nubby’s
wool off though, because he supported Steggles, and things were, in
fact, rather difficult all round till the day of the Buckland Grammar
School match. Buckland was two miles from Merivale, and most of the team
went by train; but Mathers and I, the day being fine, decided to walk;
and at the last moment Nubbs asked if he might come with Steggles.

Out of consideration for Nubby we agreed, and the four of us started on
a fine bright afternoon just after dinner. Mathers and I had our
football things on, of course; Nubbs was dressed in his usual style, and
Steggles, who used to get himself up tremendously on half-holidays, wore
yellow spats over his boots, and a sort of white thing under his
waistcoat, and gloves. We had rather more than half an hour’s walk
before us, and hardly were we out of sight of Merivale when Steggles
pulled out his pipe and lighted it.


                                  III

The artfulness of Steggles properly begins here. He knew several things
we didn’t. He knew, for instance, that M. was coming to the football
match, that she was going to ride her bicycle over on the road by which
we walked, that only the day before he had quarrelled with her, and that
his position with regard to her was at that hour most risky. All these
things Steggles well knew, and we didn’t. So he lighted his pipe with an
air of long practice. The smell was fine, and he smacked his lips now
and then.

“Nice pouch?” he said, handing me a velveteen pouch with his initials on
it in green silk.

“I’ll bet a girl did that,” said Mathers.

“It’s a secret,” said Steggles, smiling to himself.

Then he asked very civily if we would care to join him, explaining that
he generally kept a few spare pipes about him for friends.

“I would if it wasn’t for the match,” said Mathers.

“So would I,” I said.

“Well, my baccy might turn you fellows up. Perhaps you are wise,”
declared Steggles, puffing away. Then he tried Nubby with a little
cherry-wood pipe, and Nubbs thought a whiff or two wouldn’t hurt him and
began rather nervously, but gathered courage as he went on.

“I heard my father say once that life without tobacco would be hell,”
said Steggles; “and I agree with him.”

“So do I; it’s very soothing,” said Nubby.

Then Mathers burst out. He had been sulking ever since Steggles hinted
that the contents of his velveteen pouch were too strong for us.

“If you think I funk your tobacco you’re wrong,” Mathers said. “I’ve
smoked three parts of a cigar before to-day.”

“A chocolate one, perhaps?” said Steggles, but in such a humble,
inquiring voice that Mathers couldn’t hit him.

“No, a tobacco one; and if you’ve got another pipe I’ll show you.”

“So will I,” I chimed in. Mathers’s lead was always good enough for me.

Steggles immediately lugged out two more pipes. He seemed to be stuffed
with them.

“Get it well alight at the start,” he explained, handing a fusee.

“All right, all right, I know,” said Mathers. Soon we were at it like
four chimneys, and Steggles praised us in such a way that we could take
no offence.

“You’ve all smoked many a time and oft, I can see that,” he said.

Mathers spat about a good deal, and fancied tobacco was probably a fine
steadier for the nerves before a football match; and Nubbs said he
thought so too; and he also thought that after a little smoking one
didn’t want to talk, but ought just to keep quiet and think of
interesting things.

“It widens the mind,” said Steggles.

We tramped on rather silently for ten minutes till Nubbs spoke again. To
our surprise his hopeful tone had changed, and we found he had turned a
sort of putty-color, with blue lips. He said:

“I’ll overtake you fellows. I think I’ve got--I’ve got a bit of a
sunstroke or something. It’ll pass off, no doubt.”

“Better not smoke any more,” said Steggles.

“It isn’t that, but I won’t, all the same. I’ll just dodge through that
hole in the hedge and find some wild strawberries or hazel-nuts, or
something.”

Seeing it was a frosty day in December Nubby’s statements looked wild.
But he went. There was a hole in the hedge, with tree-roots trailing
across it, and Nubbs crawled shakily through, like a wounded rabbit,
into a place where a board was stuck up saying that people would be
prosecuted according to law if they went there. But he didn’t seem to
care, though it wasn’t a thing he would have done in cold blood. I saw
Mathers grow uneasy in his mind.

“Wasn’t the pipe--eh?”

“No, no. This tobacco--why, a child could smoke it,” said Steggles. “You
know what Nubbs is. It’s only an excuse to turn. He hates football and
hates walking.”

We kept on again, and I began to feel a slight perspiration on my
forehead and a weird sort of feeling everywhere. I had smoked about half
the pipe.

“I sha’n’t go on with this now because of the match,” I said, hastily
knocking out the remaining tobacco and handing his loathsome little clay
back to Steggles.

“Why!” he said, “blessed if you haven’t gone the same color as Nubbs
did! Don’t say you’ve got a sunstroke too?”

There was something in the voice of Steggles I didn’t much like, but I
hardly felt equal to answering him then.

“You’re all right, anyway, aren’t you, Mathers?” he asked.

“Of course I am. What the dickens d’ you mean?”

“Nothing. Glad you like my baccy. There’s plenty of time for another
pipe.”

“No there isn’t,” said Mathers. “I very much wish there was.”

We walked on a few yards farther.

“D’ you drink that rich, brown cod-liver oil, the same as Nubby?” asked
Steggles of Mathers, suddenly. Mathers looked at him, and I knew how
things were in a moment. For a moment my own sufferings were forgotten
before the awful spectacle of the ruin of Mathers. He gave his pipe back
quietly, took great gasps of air, mopped his forehead, and rolled his
eyes about. Then he said:

“I’m not quite happy about Nubbs. You push on, and I’ll overtake you.”

“Hanged if you’re not queer too!” exclaimed Steggles. “Whoever would
have thought that Three Castles--”

“Shut up,” said Mathers, hoarsely. “It was the boi--boiled beef at
dinner.”

He spoke the words with an awful effort.

“So it was,” I said, feebly. “We never could stand it--either of us.”

“A steaming glass of hot grog is what you want,” said Steggles,
sympathetically.

“Go!” gasped Mathers, who really looked horrid now; “go! or I’ll kick
you, if it kills me to do it.”

“Blessed if you haven’t turned green, Mathers,” said Steggles. “You look
as if you’d been buried and dug up again. I don’t say it unkindly, but
it’s jolly curious.”

At the same moment ting! ting! went a bicycle bell; and there was Milly,
looking fine.

“You’ll all be late,” she said.

We prayed she would hurry on and not observe us too narrowly. Then that
beast, Steggles, made her stop.

“Look here,” he said, “it’s frightfully serious because of the
match--these poor chaps are ill--just cast your eye at the colors
they’ve gone. They worried me to let them try to smoke, and--”

“I’ll break your neck for this!” interrupted Mathers. Then he turned to
M.

“If you’re a lady, if you ever cared an atom about us, please ride on
round that corner. We’re ill--can’t you see it?”

“Yes, I can--anybody could. I’m sorry. But you won’t hurt Steggles if I
go?” said M.

“No; I promise. Say we’re on the road and shall be there in ten--ten--
Go!”

M. took the hint and rode off, with Steggles frisking beside her, like
the dog he was.

“Thank the Lord!” said Mathers. Then horrid things happened both to him
and me.

We crawled to the match more dead than alive and found a crowd waiting,
and Browne and several of the other masters. We were fully twenty
minutes late. “This is very unsportsmanlike, the days being so short
too!” Browne squeaked. Then we took off our coats and tottered into the
field of play.

Of course Buckland Grammar School won. Our side would have done a long
way better without us. I couldn’t take a pass or shoot for the life of
me--it occupied all my time wrestling with nature, let alone the
Bucklanders. And Mathers, who played back, was worse. The roughs “guyed”
him, and asked him what he’d been drinking. If they’d asked him what
he’d been smoking there might have been some sense in it. He told me
afterwards that he often saw three footballs at one time when he tried
to kick, and sometimes four, and the ball he kicked always turned out to
be an apparition. Bradwell kept goal grandly too; but it was no good
with Mathers like that, and he utterly ruined Ashby Major, the other
back.

Nubbs had gone to bed when we got back, and the matron, knowing Nubbs
had a tricky system, sent for Doctor Barnes. Nubbs, therefore, gave
himself away.

M. never looked at any of us again, and she and Steggles undoubtedly
became frightful pals; but the next term, just before Easter, I had the
pleasure of writing a fine letter to Mathers, who had left Merivale, and
was reading for six months with a private tutor before going to
Cambridge. This is part of the letter:

“Dear Mathers,” I wrote, “you will be interested to know that Browne has
come down on Steggles at last. I fancy Browne knew the Doctor was fairly
sick of Steggles and wanted to be rid of him. In fact, I heard the
Doctor call Steggles a canker-worm myself. Anyway, Browne blew up on the
smoking, and Steggles will soon probably vanish, like the dew upon the
fleece. M. cried a bit, I fancy, when she heard it, but Nubbs says she
smiled at him two mornings afterwards coming out of chapel. Nubbs
expects to crack (his voice) any day, but he hopes to get a definite
understanding with M. before it happens. It’ll be too late after. Of
course she never looks at me. She told Steggles, and he told me, that
she could not possibly care for a person she had once seen the hue of a
Liberty Art Fabric--meaning me. I scragged Steggles after he told me.
But it is all over now. I believe he is to go into his father’s
business--Steggles & Stote, Wine Merchants. M. is more beautiful than
ever, though I’m afraid she’s got a bad disposition. To reflect on a
fellow’s color at such a time as that was a bit rough.”




                   The Protest of the Wing Dormitory


                                   I

This is the story of the most tremendous thing that ever happened at
Dunston’s, or any other school, I should think. Though in it luckily, I
didn’t do any of the big part, being merely one of those chaps who were
flogged and not expelled afterwards. Trelawny and Bradwell carried the
thing through, and all the other fellows in the Wing Dormitory followed
their lead. And, mind you, everybody had the welfare of the school at
heart. It seemed a jolly brave sort of thing to do, and jolly
interesting. Trelawny arranged the military side of the business, and
Bradwell, whose father is known as the “Whiteley” of some place in
Yorkshire, looked to the commissariat, which means feeding. As to
Trelawny, who really captained the dormitory, he was Cornish, and a
relation of that very chap fifty thousand Cornish men wanted to know the
reason why about long ago. He was going to be a soldier, read history
books for choice, and already knew many military words.

I was Bradwell’s fag at the time, because Watson minor had failed in
some secret enterprise, and I remember the first conversation which led
to everything. Happening to take some tuck in to Bradwell in the Fifth
class-room, I found Trelawny there and heard him say:

“The only way. A protest, and a jolly dignified one, must be made. It’s
for the credit of the school, and if the Doctor will not see it we must
show him. I’ve thought about it a lot, and I think if a section of chaps
could put themselves in a strong, fortified position they might demand
to be heard, and even be able to offer an--an ultimatum. Of course,
doing the thing for the good of the school and not for ourselves makes
us morally right.”

“Of course,” said Bradwell.

“But we must be physically strong. In warfare the relative positions of
the sides are always taken into account when the treaties of peace are
arranged.”

“What are you staring at?” said Bradwell to me. “You hook it.”

So I hooked. But I knew perfectly well what they were talking about.
Everybody in the Wing Dormitory did, because they often discussed the
same question after they thought the rest of the chaps were asleep. It
was the new mathematical master, Thompson, who troubled not only
Trelawny and Bradwell but a lot of the other fellows. Trelawny had
called him an “unholy bounder” the third day he was there, and that
seemed to be a general opinion. Yet, with all his bounderishness, he was
awfully clever, and meant well. But he didn’t know anything about chaps
in a general way, and he left out his h’s and stuck them in with awfully
rum effects. Thompson tried hard to be friendly to everybody, but only
the kids liked him. He couldn’t understand somehow, and insulted chaps
in the most frightful way, not seeing any difference between fellows at
the top of the school and mere kids at the bottom. Captains of elevens
were as nothing to him. He seemed to have read up boys like he read
mathematics and stuff--from rotten books. He would say sometimes, “Now,
you fellows, let’s ’ave a jolly game of leap-frog before the bell
rings,” and things like that. Boys never do play leap-frog except in
books really. Once he offered to show Trelawny how to make a kite, and
he asked Chambers--_Chambers_, mind you, the Captain of the First Eleven
at Cricket--whether he knew a shop where there were capital iron hoops
for sale at a shilling each. I heard him say it, and he put it like
this: “I say, Chambers, do you know those splendid ’oops they sell at
Burford’s in ’Igh Street? It’s out of bounds, but if you like I’ll get
you one this evening. They’ve got iron crooks and everything. I make
this offer because you understood a little of what I said about Conic
Sections this afternoon.” Thompson meant so jolly well that nobody could
get in a wax with him personally; and, as I say, the kids, who didn’t
see the “unholy bounder” side of him, and only knew he stood gallons of
ginger-beer on half-holidays in the playing-fields, liked him better
than anybody. But Trelawny took big views, and so did Bradwell, and they
decided to make a definite protest.

Nothing happened till one day Thompson said something about Trelawney’s
“Celtic thickness of skull.” That stung Trelawny like nettles, and he
set to work and arranged the great plot of the Wing Dormitory. He
decided that the fifteen chaps who slept in the isolated Wing Dormitory
of Dunston’s were to fortify the place, and hold it before the world and
the Doctor as a protest against Thompson. Every chap in the dormitory,
from Trelawny and Bradwell to Watson minor, signed their names in their
own blood on a paper Trelawny drew out; and Watson minor fainted while
he was doing it, not being able to see his own gore on a pen without
going off. We swore by a tremendous swear to obey Trelawny, to fortify
the Wing Dormitory against siege, to devote every penny of our week’s
pocket-money to provisions, and to hold out till we starved, having
first signed another paper for Doctor Dunston explaining our united
protest against Thompson, and hoping for the good of the school that he
would be removed. I didn’t understand much about it really. In fact, I
don’t believe anybody did but Trelawny and Bradwell. Only they said we
were acting for the good of the school, and they also said that if we
held the Wing Dormitory properly nothing short of cannon or starvation
could dislodge us. It was a tremendously tall building, complete in
itself, with iron fire-proof doors constructed to cut it off from the
rest of the school, and with a bath-room and a lavatory adjoining, all
at a great height above the ground. The windows were barred to keep
chaps getting out. The bars would also keep chaps getting in, as
Trelawny pointed out. He found also that it was possible when the iron
doors were closed to pull down some wood-work, and stick things behind
the doors so as they could not be opened again. The only entrance to the
Wing Dormitory was through these iron doors, so once shut we were safe
against anything but gunpowder; and Trelawny said Doctor Dunston was not
the man to resort to physical means, especially if it meant knocking the
place about. Bradwell came out wonderfully about the food, and knowing
jolly well that they would turn the water out of the bath-room when the
siege started, he made every chap fill his basin and jug the night
before; because fresh water is vital to a siege.

There were fifteen chaps, and the time came at last, and one night we
laid the manifesto on the mat outside the iron door, made everything
fast, and waited to see what would happen. Some fellows thought that
Thompson would be sent away at once, to avoid the affair becoming
serious; others fancied we should be starved out or expelled to a man.
Trelawny never hazarded any guess at what would be the end of it. “We
are doing our duty in the interests of the school,” he said, “and
whatever happens we mean well; and if it gets into print the sympathy of
all chaps in public schools will be on our side.”


                                   II

When the gas was turned out at the meter on the night preceding the
siege, Trelawny made a short speech. First he lighted two candles and
made us sign the protest; then he explained his military system of night
and day watches and guards. Each of the four windows had a guard at all
hours, and two chaps were to be stationed at the iron door. This was
made doubly strong by beds piled against it, after the manifesto had
been finally signed and left outside. The document ran thus:

“We, the undersigned, thinking that the fame of Dunston’s is tarnished
by Mr. Thompson, M.A., Fellow of Trinity College, Camb., hereby protest,
and formally assert themselves to call attention to Mr. Thompson. We,
the undersigned, have no personal grudge to Mr. Thompson, but think him
unsuited to carry on the great reputation of Dunston’s. We, the
undersigned, take this important step fully alive to the gravity of it,
for we are prepared to suffer if necessary to call attention to the
subject. We do not doubt Mr. Thompson’s goodness, and wish it to be
understood that the action is abstract and not personal. A string will
be lowered from the third window of the Wing Dormitory to-morrow at 8.30
A.M. Any answer to the protest will receive instant attention from us
the undersigned.”

Then followed the names.

Of course, it was all Greek to the kids, but they put their trust in
Trelawny and signed to a kid.

Inside the dormitory we were jolly busy, too, because after Trelawny, as
commander, had made his rules and regulations clear, Bradwell, as the
head of the commissariat, drew up a list of the total supplies, and
showed what each fellow had contributed to the store. This list I copied
for Bradwell at the time, with notes about the different supplies. It
comes in here, and I must give it, just to show what different ideas
different chaps have about the things you ought to eat in a siege.

TRELAWNY.--Two hams, eight loaves of bread.

BRADWELL.--Three tins potted salmon, two seed-cakes (big), box of
biscuits.

ASHBY MAJOR.--Ten tins sardines. (Ashby has five shillings a week
pocket-money, his father being rather rich. Bradwell said it was rather
a pity he spent it all in sardines.)

ASHBY MINOR.--Three pats of butter, three tins Swiss milk, one tin Guava
jelly. (Bradwell was awfully pleased about the milk, because he said it
was at once nourishing and pleasant to the taste.)

WILSON.--Six dried herrings, two pots veal and ham paste, one pot
marmalade. (Herrings useless, unless eaten raw.)

WEST.--Four bottles raspberry vinegar. (I am West, and I thought
raspberry vinegar would be a jolly good thing to break the monotony of a
siege. But Bradwell said it was simply a luxury.)

MORRANT.--One hamper containing twenty-four apples, twenty-seven pears,
two pots blackberry jam. (Morrant has no pocket-money, but Bradwell said
the fruit was good for a change.)

GIDEON.--Nothing. (Gideon is a Jew by birth, and gets ten shillings a
week pocket-money. He pretended he had forgotten. Trelawny says he will
suffer for it in the course of the siege.)

MATHERS.--Eight pieces of shortbread, five slabs of toffee, seven
sausage-rolls. (The rolls were cut in half to be eaten first thing
before they went bad. But Bradwell said Mathers had made the selection
of a fool, and so Mathers was rather vexed with Bradwell.)

NEWNES.--Ten loaves (five brown), one packet of beef tabloids. (Trelawny
congratulated Newnes.)

MCINNES.--A lot of spring onions and lettuces, costing one-and-sixpence.
(McInnes had been reading a book about chaps getting scurvy on a raft,
and he thought a siege would be just the place for scurvy, so he bought
all green stuff; and Bradwell said it was good.)

CORKEY MINIMUS.--Three pounds of mixed sweets. (Bradwell smacked his
head when he heard what Corkey minimus had got; but Trelawny pointed out
that a few sweets served out from time to time might distract the mind.)

DERBYSHIRE.--A pigeon-pie and thirteen currant buns with saffron in
them.

FORREST.--Four pots Bovril, one bottle cider. (Bovril can be taken on
bread like treacle, and once saved the lives of several shipwrecked
sailors.)

WATSON MINOR.--Two pounds dog-biscuits, one pound dried figs, one box of
dates. (Asked why he took dog-biscuits, he explained it was because he
had seen an advertisement about the goodness of them. It said they had
dried buffalo meat in them, which was a thing you could live for an
immense duration of time on. Trelawny said that was pretty fair sense
for a kid.)

                  *       *       *       *       *

All this splendid food was brought out of boxes where it had been hidden
and placed in the hands of Bradwell; and that night he sat up with a
candle and drew out bills of fare and made calculations. We were rather
surprised in the morning to hear the rations would not last more than a
fortnight, but Trelawny said the siege must be over long before that.
Nobody slept much, and many had dressed before the first bell rang. When
the second bell rang Trelawny and Bradwell went to the door to listen.

Presently Thompson, of all people, came up and tried to get in and
couldn’t. He shook the door, then saw the envelope addressed to the
Doctor, and said:

“What’s the meaning of this, you fellows? Let me in at once!”

But nobody answered. Then he cleared off. At 8.30 the string was lowered
from the window, and Trelawny went and stood by it to pull up any letter
that might be fastened to it. But none was. Some of the chaps were
prowling about outside looking at the Wing Dormitory, but Trelawny
wouldn’t let anybody go to the windows except himself.

Then, as nothing happened, we had breakfast. McInnes and Forrest were
told off to help Bradwell, and each chap’s rations were put on his bed
after he had made it. We all got the same except Gideon--a slice of
bread, two sardines, half one of Mathers’s sausage-rolls, and half a
tumbler of water. So we began at once to see what a jolly serious thing
a siege is. And Gideon saw it more than we did, because he had no
sardines and no sausage-roll. He offered Trelawny money for a little
more food, but Trelawny said he shouldn’t have as much as one mixed
sweet, though he might pay gold for it. He said, “You will have barely
enough to keep you alive.” And Gideon turned awfully white when he heard
it.

Breakfast didn’t take more than about five minutes, then there was a
tremendous knocking at the iron door, and Bradwell said the trouble had
begun, but Trelawny said it was the summons to a parley. Anyway, we
heard the Doctor’s voice, and it wasn’t much of a parley, strictly
speaking, because he spoke first, and merely gave us two minutes to be
in our places down-stairs.

“If you don’t obey, one and all of you,” said the Doctor, “you must take
the consequences. As it is, they will be sufficiently grave. Any further
offence I shall know how to treat.”

“If you please, sir,” said Trelawny, “the string is out of the window.
We are doing this for the good of the school, and--”

Then he stopped, because he had heard the Doctor go away.

“He’ll try a blacksmith first,” said Forrest; “then, when they find they
can’t do anything with this iron door, he’ll send for policemen.”

But nothing was done, strangely enough, and Trelawny made the chaps lie
down and sleep if they could in the afternoon, because he expected a
night attack with ladders. To get in it would be necessary to remove the
bars from the windows, and anybody attempting to do so would, of course,
be at our mercy with the windows open.

For dinner that day we had one of Trelawny’s hams cut into fifteen
pieces, with two rather thin slices of bread, one spring onion, and
three mixed sweets each, and as much raspberry vinegar as would go into
a bullet-mold that Wilson had. Gideon ate the ham like anybody else,
which shows Jews don’t refuse pork in any shape at times of siege,
whatever they say. Trelawny wouldn’t give him any raspberry vinegar, but
Ashby minor let him have one of his mixed sweets, which was green and
had arsenic in it, Ashby minor thought.

It seemed a frightfully long day, and nothing being done against us made
it longer. Bradwell tried to cook Wilson’s herrings with stuff out of a
pillow-case, but unfortunately failed. Trelawny explained that Dunston
was working out tactics, and would do something when the moon rose. He
said our motto was to be “Defence, not Defiance”; but Derbyshire said
they were going to starve us out like rats, so as to reduce the glory as
much as possible. One or two chaps had private rows that day, and
Trelawny was pretty short and sharp. He said we were to regard ourselves
as under martial law, and he stopped Forrest having any tea at all
because he looked out of the window and waved his hand to Steggles in
the playground. What made it worse for Forrest was that we opened one of
his pots of Bovril at that very tea, and of course he didn’t have any.
But Trelawny said it was good discipline, and wouldn’t let Mathers
divide his share with young Forrest, though he wanted to.

The day dragged out. Nothing was done, and no letter was put on the
string. Then night came and moonlight, and Trelawny set watches at each
window and door with directions to wake him instantly if anything
happened or anybody assembled outside below. But he didn’t sleep really.
In fact, only a few of the kids did. Bradwell got a bit down in the
mouth after dark, and I heard him say to Trelawny it wasn’t turning out
like he thought, and Trelawny said:

“It’s always the same when a position is impregnable. I could show you a
dozen similar sieges in history. Of course, it’s the most uninteresting
sort of siege when chaps simply sit and see the enemy get to the end of
their food supplies, but they won’t do that with us. The day boys will
talk, and old Dunston will raise heaven and earth to keep it out of the
printed papers. I bet he’ll tie something to the string to-morrow.”

Some of us tried to take a bright view like Trelawny, but when we heard
him tell Bradwell to run no risks and serve out as little bread as
possible, we felt that he did not really feel as hopeful of a short
siege as he seemed. Just before dusk Corkey minimus was caught in the
act of flinging a letter out of the window addressed to his mother. It
was torn up, and he was cautioned. That ended the day, and nothing else
happened until a quarter to one o’clock. Then Bradwell, whose watch it
was, called “Cave!” and came to Trelawny with frightful excitement to
say that there was the head of a ladder at his window, and a man
climbing up. Trelawny was there in a second, and asked in a loud voice
what the man wanted, and said he’d throw the ladder down if the man came
up another rung. But the man said:

“Hush! you silly fellow; I’m a friend with news from the enemy. The
least you can do is to ’ear what I’ve got to say.”

“Good Lord!” said Trelawny, “it’s Thompson!”

And so it was, and his huge head soon got level with the window, and
looked like a bull’s against the moonlight. Trelawny made everybody get
out of earshot except Bradwell; but he didn’t happen to see me, being
rolled up in bed near the window, so I heard.

First Thompson said:

“Look ’ere, you Cornish boy, I’m sorry to find we ’aven’t ’it it off by
any means, and you want me to go, and you’ve locked yourself and friends
up ’ere as a protest. Now, ’ow ’ave I ’urt your feelings, and what have
I done?”

Which was a bit difficult for Trelawny; but he fell back on the
manifesto to the Doctor.

“It’s no personal matter, sir. We wish it to be understood that the
action is abstract.”

“Oh. Well, I can’t say I know what the devil you mean by that; but I
like you all better than ever, and I understand this much, that you
don’t like me. I’m not proud. I’m quite as ready to learn as to teach.
Tell me what makes you do this, you queer things.”

“We don’t think you are the right man for Dunston’s, sir,” said
Trelawny, firmly.

“Well, but isn’t Doctor Dunston the best judge? His experience reaches
back rather farther than yours. Anyway, I’m not going. You’ll ’ave to
tolerate me. You’ll ’ave to like me too. I’ve disobeyed all orders by
climbing up ’ere now to advise you to give in to-morrow. Take my advice,
and come out at the first bell, and with ropes round your necks.
Measures are in ’and; and as your protest has utterly failed, the sooner
you give in and take your punishment the better. I’ve done my best to
make it as light as I can; but boys mustn’t do this sort of thing in big
schools, you know. It’s very naughty indeed.”

“We shall keep up the protest for another day at least, sir,” said
Trelawny, with a lot of side in his voice.

“No, my lad, you won’t,” answered Thompson. “The Doctor has taken my
advice, and by very simple means, with the least possible waste of time,
trouble, and money, we shall enter your stronghold to-morrow. I am quite
good-tempered to-day. To-morrow I shall probably be quite cross and ’ot.
The matter is in my ’ands. Do be good boys and yield while there is
time. The sooner the better.”

“I regret we cannot comply with your terms, sir,” said Trelawny.

“I’m not offering any,” answered Mr. Thompson. “I only want to make your
foolishness fall as light as possible. Your mothers’ and fathers’ ’earts
will ache over this headstrong business.”

“The parley is ended,” said Trelawney.

“All right,” said Mr. Thompson, “I’m afraid you’re a hawful little prig,
Trelawny.” Then he went down the ladder, and looking out, Bradwell
reported that he saw him taking it back to the gardener’s shed in the
shrubbery.


                                  III

There is not much more to be said about the protest of the Wing
Dormitory. I suppose Thompson was better up in tactics really than
Trelawny. Anyway, he found a weak spot that Trelawny never thought of,
and he ended the siege by half-past seven the following morning.

About six Ashby major, whose watch it was, reported that the school
fire-escape was coming round the corner. With it appeared Mr. Thompson,
Mr. Mannering, who is an Oxford “Blue” and not much smaller than Mr.
Thompson, the Doctor, the gardener, and the military agent who drills
our volunteer corps and teaches gymnastics. They put the escape against
the wall of the Wing Dormitory, between two windows, where it couldn’t
be reached by us. Then Thompson and Mannering went up, and the sergeant
and gardener followed. The Doctor waited at the foot of the ladder.

“They’ll get through the roof!” said Trelawny; “I never thought of
that!”

Trelawny turned awfully rum in the face, and tried to think out a way of
repelling a roof attack; but there wasn’t time. In about ten minutes or
so the end of an iron bar came through the ceiling; then followed a
regular avalanche of plaster and dust, that fell on Watson minor and
jolly nearly smothered him. Then came Thompson, Mannering followed, and
the gardener and the sergeant dropped after them as quick as lightning.
Of course, we were done, because only half of us were fighters, the rest
being kids; and Trelawny himself being just fifteen and Bradwell
fourteen and Ashby major twelve and a half, and I only eleven and a
half, it was no good.

“We surrender,” said Trelawny.

“Surrender, you little brute, I should think you did yield!” said
Mannering, who had cut his hand getting the slates off the roof, and was
in a rare bate.

“You needn’t insult a defeated force, sir,” said Trelawny, keeping his
nerve jolly well. “We are prepared to pay the penalty of failure, and
having meant well we--we don’t care.”

But whether we meant well or not, I know Trelawney and Bradwell both got
expelled, though Thompson was said to have tried very hard for them.
Dunston didn’t seem to realize what frightfully good motives prompted
them to protest against Thompson in an abstract way. Nothing was done to
anybody else except Ashby major and me and Wilson. We were flogged by
Mr. Mannering for the Doctor; and he did it as you might expect from a
“Blue.”

As for Thompson, he stayed on, and the protest never got into print; and
there wasn’t much disgrace for Trelawny or Bradwell after all, because
the first afterwards got into Woolwich ten from the top, through an army
crammer’s, and the second joined his father, who was the Whiteley of the
North I spoke of. He wrote to me only a week ago to say that he was
getting a hundred pounds a year from his governor for doing much less
than he had to do at Dunston’s. Mind you, Thompson is a jolly good sort,
really, and we know it now; and, as I heard my uncle say of somebody
else, I don’t suppose it’s a matter of life and death whether or no a
chap puts his h’s in the wrong places if his heart’s in the right one.




                        “Freckles” and “Frenchy”


He was the most peculiar chap that ever came to Merivale, not excepting
even Mason, who shot the Doctor’s wife’s parrot with a catapult, and,
after he had been flogged, offered to stuff it in the face of the whole
school, and nearly got expelled. Freckles was so called owing to his
skin, which was simply a complicated pattern much like what you can see
in any map of the Grecian Archipelago. This arose, he thought, from his
having been born in Australia. Anyway, it was rum to see; and so were
his hands, which had reddish down on the backs. His eyes were, also
reddish--a sort of mixture of red and gray specks, and they glimmered
like a cat’s when he was angry, which was often. His real name was
Maine, and he had no side. His father had made a big fortune selling
wool at Sydney, and his grandfather was one of the last people to be
transported to Botany Bay through no fault of his own. After he had been
on a convict ship five years a chap at home confessed on his death-bed
that he had done the thing Maine’s grandfather was transported for. So
they naturally let Maine’s grandfather go free; and he was so much
annoyed about it that he never came back home again, but married a
farmer’s daughter near Sydney and settled out there for good.

Maine didn’t think great things of England, and was always talking about
the Australian forests of blue gum-trees and bush, and sneering rather
at the size of our forests round Merivale, though they were good ones.
He never joined in games, but roamed away alone for miles and miles into
the country on half-holidays, and trespassed with a cheek I never saw
equalled. He could run like a hare--especially about half a mile or so,
which, as he explained to me, is just about a distance to blow a keeper.
Certainly, though often chased, he was never caught and never
recognized, owing to things he did which he had learned in Australia and
copied from famous bushrangers. His great hope some day was to be a
bushranger himself, and he practised in a quiet way every Saturday
afternoon, making it a rule to go out of bounds always. His get-up was
fine. My name is Tomkins, called “Nubby” because I happen to have a
rather large sort of nose, and, being fond of the country and not keen
on games, Maine rather took to me, and after I had sworn on crossed
knives not to say a word to a soul (which I never did till Freckles
left) he told me his secrets and showed me his things. If you’d seen
Freckles starting for an excursion you wouldn’t have said there was
anything remarkable about him; but really he was armed to the teeth, and
had everything a bushranger would be likely to want in a quiet place
like Merivale. Down his leg was the barrel of an air-gun, strong enough
to kill any small thing like a cat at twenty-five yards; the rest of the
gun was arranged inside the lining of his coat, and the slugs it fired
he carried loose in his trousers-pockets. Round his waist he had a
leather belt he got from a sailor for a pound. Inside the leather was
human skin, said to be flayed off a chap by cannibals somewhere, which
was a splendid thing to have for your own, if it was true; and in the
belt a place had been specially made for a knife. Freckles, of course,
had a knife in it--a “bowie” knife that made you cold to see. He never
used it, but kept it ready, and said if a keeper ever caught him he
possibly might have to. In addition to these things he carried in his
coat-pockets a little spirit-lamp and a collapsible tin pot and a bag of
tea.

He said tea was the very life of men in the bush, and that often after a
hard escape, when he was out of danger, he would get away behind a
woodstack or under banks of a stream, or some such secret place, and
brew a cup and drink it, and feel the better for it.

Lastly, Freckles had a flat lead mask with holes for the eyes and mouth,
which he always fitted on when trespassing. He said it was copied from
the helmet Ned Kelly, the King of the Bushrangers, used to wear, but it
was not bullet-proof, but only used for a disguise. We were in the same
dormitory, and one night, when all the chaps had gone to sleep, he
dressed up in these things and stood where some moonlight came in, and
certainly looked jolly.

Once, as an awful favor--me being smaller than him, and not fast enough
to run away from a man--he let me come and see what he did when
bushranging on a half-holiday in winter. “I sha’n’t run my usual
frightful risks with you,” he said, “because I might have to open fire
to save you, and that would be very disagreeable to me; but we’ll
trespass a bit, and I’ll shoot a few things, if I can. I don’t shoot
much, only for food.”

He made me a mask with tinfoil off chocolate smoothed out and gummed on
cardboard; but I had no weapons, and he said I had better not try and
get any.

We started for the usual walk. Chaps were allowed to go through a public
pine-wood to Merivale; but half through, by a place where was a board
which warned us to keep the path, Freckles branched off into some dead
bracken, and squatted down and put on his mask. I also put on mine. Then
he fastened his air-gun together and loaded it, and told me to walk six
paces behind him and do as he did. His eyes were awfully keen, and now
and then he pointed to a feather on the ground, or an old nest or a
patch of rum fungus or a crab-apple still hanging on the tree, though
all the leaves were off.

Once he fired at a jay and missed it, then fell down in the fern as if
he was shot himself, and remained quite motionless for some time. He
told me that he always did so after firing, that he might hear if
anybody had been attracted by the sound. It was a well-known bushman’s
dodge. Once we saw a keeper through a clearing, and Freckles lay flat on
his stomach, and so did I. He knew the keeper well, and told me that he
had many times escaped from him. We waited half an hour, and turned to
go back a different way from that of the keeper.

Then, where a glade sloped down to some water and the grass was all dewy
and covered with mole-hills, Freckles went to inspect a trap he had set
a week before. He was collecting skins for a mole-skin waistcoat, but he
said skinning moles was one of the beastliest tasks a hunter ever had.
However, there was a mole caught, and he skinned it and wrapped up the
skin in leaves and put it in his hat.

Then we had some real sport, for on the other side of the glade we saw
rabbits lopping about, and Freckles stalked them through the fern while
I waited motionless, and finally he shot a young one. I wanted to take
it back and get cook to do it for us, but he said I was a fool.

“If you want any you must have it now. It’s about the time I take a
meal,” he said, “and that’s a part of my ranging and hunting you haven’t
seen yet.”

He knew the country well, and said we were in one of the most carefully
preserved places anywhere about, which must have been true, for there
were an awful lot of pheasants calling in the glades. But Freckles got
down into a drain and showed me a hollow he had scooped out under a lot
of ivy where it fell over a bank.

“This is one of my caves,” he said, “and here we can feed and drink in
safety; but you mustn’t talk or I sha’n’t be able to hear if anything is
stirring in the woods.”

He took off his mask, set down his gun, and lighted his spirit-stove.

“Skin the rabbit and cut off his hind-legs while I make tea,” he said.

So I did, and he held them over the lamp till they were slightly cooked
outside, but not right through. He ate and drank with his ears straining
for every sound. Then he took the rest of the rabbit and removed all
traces of eating, and buried everything we had left.

“If I didn’t,” he explained, “some keeper’s dog would find my lair, and
make a row and give it away, and the keepers would doubtless lie in wait
for me and catch me red-handed. You can’t be too careful, because every
man’s hand’s against you; which, of course, is the beauty of it.”

We got back without anything happening, and I’ve hated the sight of
rabbit pretty well ever since, but Freckles said the juices of animals
are better for the human frame underdone.

Well, that gives you an idea of Freckles, and the affair with Frenchy,
which I am going to tell you about, showed that he really was cut out
for bushranging. Frenchy, as we called him, was Monsieur Michel. He
didn’t belong entirely to Dunston’s, but lived in Merivale and came to
us three days a week, and went to a girl’s school the other three. He
was a rum, oldish chap, whose great peculiarities were to make puns in
English and to appeal to our honor about everything.

He would slang a fellow horribly one day, and wave his arms and pretty
nearly jump out of his skin; and the next day he would bring up a
whacking pear for the fellow he’d slanged, or a new knife or something.
He pretty nearly cried sometimes, and he told us his nerves were
frightfully tricky, and often led him to be harsh when he didn’t mean
it. He couldn’t keep order or make chaps work if they didn’t choose; and
Steggles, who had an awfully cunning dodge of always rubbing him up the
wrong way, and then looking crushed and broken-hearted so as to get
things, which he did, said that Frenchy was like damp fireworks, because
you never knew exactly when he’d go off or how.

One day, dashing out of class with a frightful yell, Freckles got sent
for, and went back and found Monsieur raving mad. It seemed that
Freckles had yelled too soon--before he was out of the class-room, in
fact, and Frenchy had got palpitation of the heart from it. He let into
Freckles properly then. He said he was his “_bête noire_” and “_un sot à
vingt-quatre carats_”--which means an eighteen-carat ass in English, but
twenty-four carats in French--and “one of the aborigines who ought to be
kept on a chain,” and many other such-like things. Freckles turned all
colors, and then white, with a sort of bluish tint to his lips. He
didn’t say a word, but looked at Frenchy with such a frightful
expression that I felt something would happen later. All that happened
at the time was that Freckles got the eighth book of Telemachus to write
out into French from English, and then correct by Fénelon, which was a
pretty big job if a chap had been fool enough to try and do it; and
Monsieur Michel went off to Merivale with a big card on his coat-tail
with “_Ici on parle Français_” written upon it in red pencil. This I had
managed to do myself while Frenchy was jawing Freckles. I told Freckles,
but it didn’t comfort him much. He said there were some things no mortal
chap could stand; and to be called “an aborigine” because a man was born
in Australia seemed to him about the bitterest insult even an old
frog-eating Frenchman could have invented. Happening to _him_, of all
chaps, it was especially a thing which would have to be revenged, seeing
what his views were. He said:

“I couldn’t bushrange or anything with a clear conscience in the future
if I had a thing like this hanging over me unrevenged. It’s the
frightfulest slur on my character, and I won’t sit down under it for
fifty Frenchmen.”

Then he said he should take a week to settle what to do, and went into
the playground alone.

Next time Frenchy came up he was just the same as ever--awfully
easy-going and jolly, and let Freckles off the Telemachus, and offered
him as classy a knife, with a corkscrew and other things, including
tweezers, as ever you saw--just the knife for Freckles, considering his
ways. But it didn’t come off. Freckles got white again when he saw the
knife, and said:

“Thank you, Monsieur, I don’t want your knife; and the imposition is
half done, and will be finished next time you come.”

Then Frenchy called him a silly boy, and tried to make a joke and pinch
Freckles by the ear. But nobody saw the joke, and Freckles dodged away.
Then Frenchy sighed, and looked round to see who should have the knife,
and didn’t seem to see anybody in particular, and left it on his desk.
He often sighed in class, and sometimes told us he was without friends,
unless he might call us friends; and we said he might.

When he went, Freckles told me he considered the knife was another
insult. Then he explained what he was going to do. He said:

“I shall finish the impot first, so as not to be obliged to him for
anything, and then I shall stick him up.”

“Stick him up--how?” I said.

“It’s a bushranging expression,” he explained. “To ‘stick up’ a man is
to make him stand and deliver what he’s got. I see my way to do this
with Frenchy. He always goes and comes from Merivale through the woods,
as you know, and now he’s up here on Friday nights coaching Slade and
Betterton for their army exam. Afterwards he has supper with Mr.
Thompson or the Doctor. There you are. I wait my time in the wood, which
is jolly lonely by night, though it is such a potty little place hardly
worth calling a wood; then he comes along, and I stick him up.”

“It’s highway robbery,” I said. “You might get years and years of
imprisonment.”

“I might,” he said, “but I sha’n’t. You must begin your career some
time, and I’m going to next Friday night. I’ve often got out of the
dormitory and been in that wood by night, and only the chaps in the
dormitory have known it.”

Well, the night came, and all that we heard about it till afterwards was
that about eleven o’clock, or possibly even later than that, there was a
fearful pealing at the front door of Dunston’s, and looking out we could
see a stretcher and something on it. That something was actually
Freckles, though the few chaps who knew what was going to be done felt
sure it must be Frenchy; because Freckles is five feet ten and growing,
and Frenchy isn’t more than five feet six at the outside, and a poor
thing at that.

But it _was_ Freckles all right, and two laboring men had brought him
back, and Frenchy had come with them.

Not until five weeks afterwards, when Freckles could get up and limp
about, did I hear the truth; and I’ll tell it in his own words, because
they must be better than a chap’s who wasn’t there. He seemed
frightfully down in the mouth, and said that he could never look fellows
in the eyes again; but it cheered him telling me, and when I told him he
was thundering well out of it he admitted he was. He said:

"I got off all right, and the moon was as clear as day, and everything
just ripe for sticking a chap up. Then, like a fool, having a longish
time to wait, I didn’t simply stop in shadow behind a tree-trunk or
something in the usual way, but thought I’d do a thing I’d never heard
of bushrangers doing, though Indian thugs are pretty good at it. I went
and got up a tree which has a branch over the road, and I thought I’d
drop down almost on top of Frenchy to start with. And that’s just what I
did do, only I dropped wrong, and came down pretty nearly on my head
owing to slipping somehow at the start. What did exactly happen to me as
I left the tree I never shall know. Anyway, Frenchy came along sure
enough, and I dropped, and he jumped I should think fully a yard in the
air; but that was all, because in falling I hit a big root (it was a
beech-tree), and went and broke something in my ankle and something in
my chest and couldn’t stand. Consequently, of course, I couldn’t stick
him up. The pain was pretty fair, but feeling what a fool I was seemed
to make me forget it. Anyway, finding it was useless to think of
sticking him up, I tried to hobble into the fern and get out of sight;
and finding I couldn’t crawl, I rolled. But of course you can’t roll
away from a chap, and he came after me, and my mask fell off while I
rolled, and he recognized me.

"‘_Mon Dieu!_ it is the boy Maine!’ he said. ‘Speak, child, what in the
wide world was this?’

"I disguised my voice and said I wasn’t Maine, and that he’d better
leave me alone or it might be the worse for him yet. But he wouldn’t go,
and, chancing to get queer about the head somehow I went off, I suppose,
though it wasn’t for long. When I came to he was gone, but he rushed
back in a minute with that rotten old top-hat he wears full of water
he’d got from the puddle in the stone-pit. He doused my head and made me
sit up with my back against a tree. Then, feeling the frightfulness of
it, I begged him to clear out and let me alone. I said:

"‘You don’t know what you’re doing. I’m no friend to you, but the
deadliest enemy you’ve got in the world, and if I hadn’t fallen down at
a critical moment and broken myself I should have stuck you up, Monsieur
Michel. So, now, you know.’

"He said to himself, ‘The poor mad boy--the poor mad boy--I will run _à
toutes jambes_ for succor’; but I told him not to. I began to get a rum
hot pain in my side then, but I felt I would gladly have died there
rather than be obliged to him. I said:

"‘You called me an “aborigine,” which is the most terrible thing you can
call an Australian-born chap, and you wanted to pass it off with a knife
with a corkscrew and tweezers in it. But you couldn’t expect me to take
it, feeling as I did. Now the fortunes of war have given you the
victory, and, if you please, I wish you’d go.’

“But he refused. He said he wouldn’t have hurt my feelings for anything.
He seemed to overlook altogether what I was going to do to him, and
asked me where it hurt me. I told him, and he said it was his
fault--fancy that! and wished he was big enough to carry me back. I kept
on asking him to go, and at last, after begging my pardon like anything,
for about a week it seemed, he went. But I heard him shouting and
yelling French yells in the woods, and after a bit he came back with two
men and a hurdle. They presently took me back, and what Frenchy’s said
since to the Doctor I don’t know. In fact, I didn’t know anything for
days. Anyway, I’ve had nothing but a mild rowing and very good grub, and
I’m not to be even flogged, though that’s probably because I broke a rib
or two, not including the bone in my leg. But I’m all right now, and I
think it was about the most sporting thing a chap ever did for Frenchy
to treat me like that--eh? I shouldn’t have thought it was in a
Frenchman to do it, especially after I told him what I was going to do.”

“Yes,” I said, “that’s all right, but what about bushranging?”

“It’s pretty sickening,” he said, “but I feel as if all the keenness was
knocked out of me. If a chap can’t so much as fall out of a tree on a
wanderer’s path at the nick of time without smashing himself, what’s the
good of him?”

“Besides,” I said, “if it hadn’t been Frenchy, but somebody else of a
different turn of mind, he might have taken you at a disadvantage and
jolly well killed you.”

“In real bushranging that is what would have happened,” admitted
Freckles. “As it is, I expect months, perhaps years, will have to go by
before I feel to hanker after it again. And meantime I sha’n’t rest in
peace till I’ve paid Frenchy.”

“How?” I asked.

“Well, I believe it’s to be done. He’s often come to see me while I was
on my back in bed, and he’s told me a lot about himself. He’s
frightfully hard up, and a Roman Catholic, and hopes to lay his bones in
_la belle_ France with luck, but he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to
manage it. He told me all this, little knowing my father was extremely
rich. Well, you see, the mater wants somebody French for the kids at
home, which are girls, and, knowing Frenchy bars this climate, I think
Australia might do him good. He’s fifty-three years old, and it seems to
me if the guv’nor wrote and offered him his passage and a good screw
he’d go. I have made it a personal thing to myself, and told the guv’nor
what a good little chap he is, and what a beautiful accent he’s got, and
the thing that happened in the wood.”

The affair dropped then, and about six weeks after, when Freckles was
getting fit again, he walked with me one half-holiday to see the place
where he was smashed up. The bough was a frightful high one to drop from
even in daylight, also it was broken. Freckles got awfully excited when
he spotted it.

“There! there!” he said, “that’s the best thing I’ve seen for twelve
weeks!”

“I don’t see much to squeak about,” I said, “especially as the beastly
tree nearly did for you.”

“But can’t you see it’s broken? That’s what did it! I thought I slipped,
and if I had I shouldn’t have been made of the stuff for a bushranger;
but the wretched branch broke, and that is jolly different. That wasn’t
my fault. The most hardened old hand must have come down then. In fact,
he couldn’t have stopped up. Oh, what a lot of misery I’d have been
saved through all these weeks if I’d known it broke in a natural sort of
way!”

He got an awful deal of comfort out of this, and said he should return
to his old ways again as soon as he could run a mile without stopping.
And we found his lead mask, like Ned Kelly’s, just where it had dropped
when he had rolled over in the fern, and he welcomed it like a dog.

That’s the end, except that his father did write to Dunston about
Frenchy; and Dunston, not being very keen about Frenchy himself, seemed
to think he would be just the chap for the girls of Freckles’s father.
Anyway, he went, and he cried when he said good-bye to the school; and
Freckles told me that when he said good-bye to him he yelled with
crying, and blessed him both in French and English, and said that the
sunny atmosphere of Australia would very likely prolong his life until
he had saved enough to get his bones back to France.

So he went, and Freckles went after him much sooner than he ever
expected to, because the keepers finally caught him in the game
preserves, sitting in his hole under the stream bank, frizzling the leg
of a pheasant which he had shot out of a tree with his air-gun and
buried seven days before. And Dunston wrote to his father, and his
father wrote back that Freckles, being now fourteen and apparently
having less sense than when he left Australia, had better return to his
native land, and go into the wool business, and begin life as an
office-boy in his place of business. Freckles told me that chaps in his
father’s office generally got a fortnight’s holiday, but that his mother
would probably work up his governor to give him three weeks. Then he
would get a proper outfit and track away to the boundless scrub, and
fall in with other chaps who had similar ideas, and begin to take life
seriously. He said I might see his name in Australian papers in about a
year. But he never wrote to me, and I don’t know if he really succeeded
well. I’m sure I hope he did, for he was a tidy chap, though queer.




                       Concerning Corkey Minimus


                                   I

If Corkey minor had been at school that term the thing would never have
come about; but Corkey minor was always one of the lucky chaps, and just
when, in the ordinary course of events, he would have had to begin
fagging for an exam., something happened to his right lung, and he had
to go on an awful fine trip to Australia in a sailing ship. That left
Corkey major, who was a mere learning machine in the Sixth, and Corkey
minimus, who was ten, and in the Lower Fourth.

It began like this. After Bray had licked Derbyshire and Bethune, which
he did one after the other on the same half-holiday, chaps gave him
“best,” as a matter of course, and he became cock of the lower school.
He was solid muscle all through, and harder than stone, and he had a
brother in London who was runner-up in the amateur “light-weight”
championship two years following. Bray fancied himself a bit, naturally,
and was always roaming about seeking fellows to punch. But once, out of
bounds in a private wood, a keeper caught him and licked him, which was
seen by two other fellows, and remembered against Bray afterwards when
he put on too much side.

He and Corkey minimus were in the same class, because Bray, though
thirteen, didn’t know much. At first they were great chums, and Bray
bossed Corkey and palled with him; and when Browne, the under
mathematical master, told Corkey minimus that he was “the least of all
the Corkeys, and not worthy to be called a Corkey,” because he couldn’t
do rule-of-three, or some rot, Bray said a thing that Browne overheard,
and got sent up. But by degrees the friendship of Bray and Corkey
minimus cooled off, and the matter of Milly settled it.

The Doctor had four daughters, and Milly was the youngest. Mabel and
Ethel held no dealings with any fellows under the Sixth, and Mary had
something wrong with her spine and didn’t count. But I never cared for
any of them myself, because you couldn’t tell what they meant. Beatrice,
for instance, was absolutely engaged to Morris, for he told his sister
so in the holidays, and his sister told Morris minor, and he told me the
next term. Morris was the head of the school, and he had her photograph
fixed into a foreign nut which he wore on his watch-chain. But when he
left, and she found out he was gone into a bank at £80 a year, she
dropped him like a spider. Mind you, Morris had told her he was
descended, on his mother’s side, from a race of old Irish kings, which
may have unsettled her. Anyway, when she found he came, on his father’s
side, from a race of church curates, she wrote and said it was off.

But there were other things that upset the chumming of Bray and Corkey
minimus before the Milly row, and they ought to be taken in turn. First,
there was the Old Testament prize, which was the only thing Bray had the
ghost of a chance of getting. But Corkey beat him by twenty-three marks;
and Bray said afterwards that Corkey had cribbed a lot of stuff about
Joshua, and Corkey said he hadn’t, and even declared he knew as much
about Joshua as Bray, and a bit over. Then, on top of that, came the
match with neckties, which was rather a rum match in its way. Both of
them used to be awfully swagger about their neckties, and each fancied
his own. So one bet the other half a crown he would wear a different
necktie every day for a month. The month being June, that meant thirty
different neckties each, and the chap who wore the best neckties would
win. A fellow called Fowle was judge, being the son of an artist; and
neither Bray nor Corkey was allowed to buy a single new tie or add to
the stock he had in his box. At the end of a fortnight they stood about
equal, though Corkey’s ties were rather more artistic than Bray’s, which
were chiefly yellow and spotted. But then came an awful falling away,
and some of the affairs they wore were simply weird. The test for these
was if the tie passed in class. Then the terms of the match were
altered, and they decided to go on wearing different things till one or
other was stopped by a master. Any concern not noticed was considered a
necktie “in the ordinary acceptation of that term,” as Fowle put it. At
the end of the third week Corkey minimus came out in an umbrella cover
done in a sailor’s knot, but nobody worth mentioning spotted it; and the
next day Bray wore a bit of blue ribbon off a chocolate box, which also
passed. They struggled on this sort of way till Bray got bowled over. I
think Corkey was wearing a yard-measure dipped in red ink that morning,
but it looked rather swagger than not. Class was just ended, when old
Briggs, of all people--a man who wore two pairs of spectacles at one
time very often--said to Bray:

“What is that round your neck, boy?” And Bray said:

“My tie, sir.”

Then Briggs said:

“Is it, sir? Let me see it, please. I have noticed an increasing
disorder about your neck arrangements for a week past. You insult me and
you insult the class by appearing here in these ridiculous ties.”

“It sha’n’t happen again, sir,” said Bray, trying to edge out of the
class-room.

“No, Bray, it shall not,” said old Briggs. “Bring me that thing at once,
please.”

Bray handed it up, and Briggs examined it as if it was a botanical
specimen or something.

“This,” he announced, “is not a necktie at all. You’re wearing a piece
of Brussels carpet, wretched boy--a fragment of the new carpet laid down
yesterday in the Doctor’s study. You will kindly take it to him
immediately, say who sent you, and state the purpose to which you were
putting it.”

So Bray, by the terms of the match, lost, and Corkey minimus won with
the yard measure.

Then the feeling between them grew, especially after Bray said that he
could only pay his half-crown in instalments of a penny a week.

Now we come to Milly. You see she was Corkey minor’s great pal the term
before, but now that he was at sea, and thousands of miles off, she
chucked him and turned to Corkey minimus. That shows what she was
really. Anyway, in a bad moment for young Corkey, she told him he had
eyes like an eagle’s, and it simply turned his head. As an eagle’s eyes
are yellow, I couldn’t see myself what there was to be so jolly pleased
about; but he was, and, to show you what a chap may come to if a girl
collars him, I know for a fact that Corkey minimus tried to paint a
picture for her. Whether he actually succeeded I cannot say, but he went
down four places in class, and got awfully dropped on by Browne.

Then came that attempt of Bray to cut Corkey out, and, being myself a
tremendous personal chum of Corkey’s, I wished he had succeeded; but he
didn’t, and even his fighting didn’t take Milly. After a month of giving
her things to eat and so on, he said it was his red hair that stood
between them, and told Fowle he didn’t care a straw about her; but from
the way he went on to Corkey minimus, any fool could see he really cared
a lot. The chap called Fowle comes in here. This “obscene Fowle,” as we
called him out of Virgil, being really a term in a crib applied to
harpies, though he would have run if a mouse had squeaked at him, was
yet responsible for more fights than any fellow in the school. He
sneaked about, asking chaps if they gave one another “best,” and when at
last he found two who didn’t funk each other, though they might be
perfectly good friends, he never rested until there was a fight. He got
kicked sometimes, but not enough. That was owing to the fact that his
hampers from home were most extraordinary. They came on Roman feast
days, because he was a Roman Catholic by religion; and some fellows even
said the more you kicked Fowle the more you were likely to get from the
hampers. That was rot, of course, and a jolly suspicious thing happened
once. Newnes--a chap in the lower Fifth--kicked Fowle the very morning
before a hamper came; and that same evening, after prayers, Fowle gave
Newnes about half a whacking big melon, and the next day Newnes jolly
near died. Fowle swore he hadn’t put anything in the melon, but it is
bosh to say that half a melon, if it’s all right, is going to do a chap
any harm. Anyway, we rather funked Fowle’s hampers afterwards.

Well, this wretched, obscene Fowle met me one day licking his fat lips
and showing great excitement. So I knew he’d probably worked up a fight;
but it wasn’t that, though something worse. He said:

“Where’s Corkey minimus? Bray wants him.”

“What for?” I said. I may mention that I am called McInnes.

“As a matter of fact, he’s heard something, and he says, though he’s
sorry, he’s got to lick Corkey.”

Fowle smacked his beastly mouth as if he’d got pine-apple drops in it.

“What’s Corkey done?” I said.

“It’s about Milly Dunston. Young Corkey talks jolly big with her, and
doesn’t even speak civil of his friends. By quite an accident I was
passing through the shrubbery from Browne’s house to the chapel
yesterday, and I went by the summer-house, which is out of bounds, and
couldn’t help overhearing Milly and Corkey minimus, who were there. And
Corkey distinctly said that Bray was as fiery as his hair, and that he
had no more control of himself than a burning mountain; and Milly
laughed.”

“And you sneaked off and told Bray?”

“As his chum I had to.”

“Ah, then I shall tell Corkey what you heard, being his chum.”

“I shouldn’t,” said Fowle. “It’s only making mischief. Besides, Bray
won’t take an apology now. He says he’s stood all that flesh and blood
can stand. Those were his very words. In fact, I’m looking for Corkey
minimus at this moment to tell him that Bray wants him up in the ‘gym.’”

“To lick him?”

Fowle smacked his lips again.

“He’s brought it on himself.”

“Well,” I said, “I’ll give the message. You can go back and tell Bray
you’ve told me.”

“I’d rather have done it myself,” said Fowle, regretfully, as though he
was being robbed of tuck.

“Well, you won’t,” I answered him, being pretty sick with the worm of a
chap by that time. “You go back and say that Corkey will turn up in ten
minutes.”

Then he cleared out reluctantly, leaving this tremendous responsibility
entirely on my hands.


                                   II

I went off there and then for Corkey. It’s a bit of a jar for a chap to
get a message like that unexpectedly, and I didn’t know what advice to
give. Corkey major was no good. If I’d told him he would have blinked
through his goggles and have said some bosh--very likely in Latin. And
Corkey minor, being thousands of miles away, it looked blue, because you
can’t ask anybody but a chap’s own brothers to take up a matter like
this. I couldn’t lick Bray myself, or I would have.

The next minute I met Corkey himself, and, from an awful rum look about
him, I thought for a moment he’d had the licking already. But he hadn’t,
and before I could speak he said:

“McInnes, I’ve got to fight Bray.”

“My dear chap, you couldn’t,” I began.

“I know,” he answered, “but I’ve got to. Things have happened. Listen to
this. I’ve just left Milly, and she’s in a frightful bate. I shouldn’t
have thought a girl could have got in such a rage without hurting
herself. Bray told Fowle that there were as good fish in the sea as ever
came out of it--meaning Milly; and Fowle wrote it on a bit of paper and
dropped it where Milly was bound to see it. He didn’t put his name, but
she knows his writing. Now she’s pretty well mad, and says it’s a
disgrace that a thick-necked, speckly, stumpy chap like Bray should be
cock of the lower school. Well, I said, very likely it was, but I didn’t
see how it could be helped, him being such a fighter. Then she tossed
her hair about, and said, ‘I won’t have anything more to do with the
lower school at all while he’s cock of it.’ Of course, I didn’t think
she included me, being--well, her greatest pal alive since Corkey minor
went. So I said, ‘Quite right; I shouldn’t look at them.’ Then she
turned round rather suddenly and said _I_ was included. So I said, ‘I
should be only too glad to fight him if there was a ghost of a chance,
but there isn’t. It’s no good pretending. He’s four inches taller, and
miles more round the chest and round the arms, and ages older. In fact,
he could lick me with one hand tied behind him.’ Then she said, ‘The
days of chivalry are dead,’ which she’d got out of a book, of course;
and she added that she was tired of all boys, and that a chap with eyes
like mine ought to have more ‘devil’ in him. Yes, she used that word. I
said, ‘What do you want me to do?’ And she said, ‘Oh, nothing. I
wouldn’t have a hair of your head singed for the world; only I thought
that it might interest you more than other people to know I’d been
insulted. Of course, if it’s nothing to you--’ Then she stopped and
marched away, and I went after her and asked her to explain, and she
answered that the explanation ought to come from me. She said, ‘D’ you
ever read dragon stories?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ Then she went on, ‘Well,
in all the ones I’ve read, if a lady asked anybody to kill a dragon, the
person didn’t say that the dragon could beat him with one paw tied
behind it, even though he thought so; but he jolly well went and did the
best he could.’ Naturally, after that I saw what she meant, and I said,
‘Oh, all right, Milly; of course, if you’ve been insulted, I must make
the beggar apologize--or try to.’ ‘Yes,’ she said, cheering up like
anything; ‘you are my own precious champion, and I love you.’ I tell you
all this because you’re my chum, and you’ll have to be my second. And if
I can even black his eye before he settles me, it will be something.”

“Well, I call it a chouse,” I said. “She might as well have asked you to
fight Blanchard or Sims. Look at your arms, not to mention anything
else; they’re like cabbage-stalks.”

“Yes, I know all that,” said Corkey minimus, “and it’ll be rather rotten
for her if he kills me. But the thing’s got to be done, and the sooner
it’s over the better.”

Then I suddenly remembered Bray’s message, and told Corkey. He seemed
surprised.

“He can’t lick me on the spot if I challenge him to fight in a regular
way, can he?” he asked, but rather doubtfully.

I said it seemed to me he couldn’t. Then we went up to the “gym,” where
Bray was talking to about four chaps, including Fowle.

“Oh, you’ve come, you kid, have you? You’d better not keep me waiting
another time when I send for you,” he began. “Now I’m going to lick you
for cheek.”

“What cheek?” Corkey minimus said.

“Fowle heard you say I was as fiery as my hair.”

“Oh, Fowle, he hears a lot, I know.”

“Did you say it or didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did, and I say it again; and you’re a dirty bully too.”

Bray came quite close to Corkey minimus, and put his face so near that
their noses were almost touching, like cats do when they’re going to
have a row on a wall.

“Say that just once more if it isn’t troubling you too much,” said Bray.

“I’ll say it as often as you like,” answered young Corkey, keeping his
eye on Bray’s, “and I’ll say another thing too, which is, that before
you talk so big about me being a ‘kid’ and licking me, you’d better find
out first if I give you ‘best.’”

“Golly!” said Bray, grinning like mad, “don’t you?”

“No, I don’t; and I’ll fight you properly with seconds the first minute
we can.”

Corkey minimus had certainly come out of it fine so far, and I only
wished he could fight as well as he talked. Of course, from Bray’s point
of view, it was the best thing that could have happened, because now he
had a right to lick Corkey, and a right to lick him as badly as he
could. The bell rang a minute afterwards, and going in it was settled
the fight should come off next Wednesday, that being a half-holiday.
Part of Merivale Woods skirted the cricket-field, and as the second
eleven, to which Bray belonged, wasn’t playing a match, everything
suited very comfortably. Blanchard, the cock of the school, agreed to
umpire, and he and another chap in the Fifth very kindly promised to
carry young Corkey home by a secluded way if he was too much smashed to
walk. Fowle seconded Bray, and I saw Bray teaching him how to fan with a
towel and spurt water over a fellow’s face between the rounds. Of
course, it was about as good fun as killing rats with a stick for Bray.


                                  III

Corkey minimus saw Milly once or twice before the fight, and he said he
couldn’t make out whether she was going mad or what. One minute she
wanted him to fight, the next she implored him not to; one minute she
hoped he would mutilate Bray to pieces, the next she blubbed and prayed
him if ever he had any liking for her to give Bray “best.” She said she
kept dreaming of him brought back stark and stiff; and then, when he
began to think she meant it, she called him her “knight” and her “hero”
and her “King Arthur” and other frightful rot, and actually wanted him
to wear one of her Sunday gloves under his shirt at the time of
fighting! Corkey minimus said he very likely wouldn’t wear a shirt; and
then she thought he might hang it--I mean the glove--round his neck by a
bit of string!

“Blessed if I shall ever feel quite the same to her after this,” said
Corkey.

“It seems rather rough to get broken up for life to please a skimpy
girl,” I said. Then he burst out as red in the face as an apple, and
told me he would not hear a word against Milly, so I dried up.

There were three days before the fight, and Corkey minimus trained for
it, and gave away his pudding at dinner in exchange for the meat of the
chaps who sat next to him. But you can’t get your muscle up in a day or
two like that, and it only made him awfully thirsty.

The day came at last, and I may as well go on to the fight itself. The
First were having a big match on our own ground, so nobody paid any
attention to us, and we arranged a game that should have Corkey, Bray,
and me on the same side. Then, when our chaps were in, we three sneaked
away into the plantations, behind some holly-trees and a woodstack. Bray
arranged all the preliminaries as cheerful as a bird, and Blanchard said
they were right. They marked out a ring and ran a string round and
arranged corners for the seconds; and I saw that the obscene Fowle had
towels and bottles of water and a basin--all, of course, for Bray
between the rounds. Corkey minimus was rather waxy with me for not
bringing the same for him; but I’d brought a sponge, which I know is a
thing a second chucks up in the air when his man is done for; and I
explained and showed it to Corkey; and he thanked me and said he
supposed that was about the only thing he should want. Blanchard said
the rounds were to be two minutes long each, and Bray grumbled because
they ought by rights to be three. But Blanchard told him to shut up and
begin. When we saw Bray take his shirt off I told Corkey he ought to,
and he did. Then Blanchard laughed and said:

“By gum! they peel rather different!”

Bray was like a barrel, with muscles a lot bigger than hen’s eggs on his
arms. Corkey minimus seemed to be all ribs somehow, with arms about as
lean as rulers. I told him to keep moving about and try and puff Bray a
bit if he had time, and he said:

“All right, I’ll try. If I can get a smack at his face, so as to black
an eye or something, and show I’ve hit him before he does for me, I
don’t care.”

I will say for Corkey minimus that he had about the best pluck I ever
saw in a chap. He was quite calm, and just his usual color; and when
Bray tossed him for corners Corkey won; and Blanchard said I picked the
right corner for him. Then he told them to fight fair, and said “Time!”

I’d prayed Corkey to try and surprise Bray at the very start if he
could, and have a hit at Bray’s face the moment they began. And I’m
blessed if he didn’t go and do it! Bray began fiddling about jolly
scientifically with his hands, and I fancy he just squinted down to see
if his feet were scientific too. At the same moment Corkey buzzed round
his right and let Bray have it fairly on the nose. Bray jumped and
looked about as much surprised as if he’d been struck by lightning; and
Blanchard said:

“First blood for Corkey minimus!”

I yelled--I oughtn’t to have, but I did--because to see blood dropping
about on Bray’s chest was a fine sight. He sniffed and went for Corkey
smiling. The smile was the beastliest part of it, for I hoped he would
have got his wool off a bit and been wild. But he wasn’t, and when he
began to hit, Corkey got flustered and swung about like a windmill and
caught it pretty hot. Yet he jerked his head so jolly quick that he
didn’t get more than about four smacks on it in the first round, though
his body, which was white by nature, was pretty soon covered with red
marks. He said they didn’t hurt, and I cleaned him up and blew water
over him at the end of the round. His lip was bleeding like mad, but
luckily inside, where his tooth had cut it; and he swallowed all the
blood, so nobody knew; besides which the blood wasn’t lost. Bray flung
himself down in his corner, and Fowle looked after him; and even at a
solemn time like that I laughed, and so did Corkey minimus, because
Fowle tried to be too clever, and spurted a lot of water out of his
mouth into Bray’s eye. Then Bray told him that after the fight he’d tie
him in knots and kick him, looking forward to which, of course, wrecked
Fowle’s enjoyment entirely.

Blanchard said “Time!” again awfully soon, and I saw Bray meant settling
Corkey now, because his reputation as a fighter was at stake, and he
knew Corkey hoped to get through three rounds with luck. So Bray began
hitting him like hammers, and though I was about as sorry for Corkey
minimus as a chap could be, nobody would have been able to help admiring
the way Bray hit. It was just at the end of this round, when Corkey had
been knocked down once, but got up again, that the awful rum thing with
Milly Dunston happened.

Suddenly, without any warning, there was a noise like fowls getting up a
hedge, and she rushed out from behind the woodstack with her eyes
blazing and her hair streaming like a comet in a bate. She’d been
running a good way, I should think, and she tore right into the ring
straight at Bray, and not trusting to words at a time like that, and not
remembering her father was a clergyman, or anything, slapped his face
both sides, and jolly hard too. Bray swore the horriblest words I ever
heard used by a chap, because she’d given him more in half a second than
Corkey could have in a year. Then he got into his shirt upside-down and
hooked it with Fowle, but not before he heard her say:

“You little, fat, red-headed coward to fight and try and murder a boy
half your age and size! I wish I could kill you, I do. It’s shameful to
think you’re an English boy at all!”

Then she turned on the chaps from the Fifth, and told Blanchard he was a
disgrace to the school. So they cleared out too; and then she cried over
Corkey, and said she would rather have been torn to pieces by unchained
monsters than have let him be mangled like he was. And Corkey, who was
pretty well dazed, forgave her, and told her kindly to go away. And she
gasped and gurgled, and went.

I took Corkey back, and one or two things got to be known. It came out
that Fowle had told Milly the place and the hour of the fight, but only
after she had sworn--on some rotten saint Fowle knew--that she would not
tell a single soul about it. She kept her swear all right, but came
herself. And when Bray got to hear how it was she came--of course,
thinking Corkey had told her, which he would rather have died than
do--then Bray tried a lot of Chinese tortures on Fowle that he’d seen at
a wax-works. And chaps who saw it said that Fowle was so excited at the
time that he called upon about twenty different well-known Bible
characters by name to come and help him and destroy Bray. But they
didn’t.

As for Corkey minimus, the things he got from Milly after that fight you
wouldn’t believe. There were bottles of stuff to rub bruises with, and
lozenges and grapes, and some muck for his eye, and little baskets of
strawberries, and jolly books and rosebuds. She told the Doctor about
slapping Bray’s face, and wrote a long letter of apology afterwards; and
a week later she broke it to Corkey minimus that she was going to a
boarding-school herself next term; which she did.

When Corkey told me about it he added:

“And she’s going to write me letters, because she’s said several times
that there’s only one chap in the world for her now, and I’m the chap.”

“I shouldn’t think she could change her mind after all that’s happened,”
I said.

And Corkey minimus said:

“I bet she will when Corkey minor turns up again, especially if he
brings rum things with him from Australia. And you needn’t repeat it,
but to you, McInnes, as my chum, I say that I don’t care how soon he
does come back either.”

Which showed that there was more sense in Corkey minimus than you might
have thought.




                            The Piebald Rat


It was all the result of old Briggs asking the Doctor if he might
“instil the lads with a wholesome fondness for natural history.” That’s
how he put it, because I heard him; and the Doctor said it was an
admirable notion, and would very probably keep some boys out of mischief
on half-holidays. It also kept some boys out of bounds on half-holidays;
and after a time I think the Doctor was pretty savage with old Briggs,
and wished he’d stuck to his regular work, which was writing and drawing
and such like; because, when one or two of the chaps really got keen
about natural history, and even chucked cricket for butterflies and
beetles, others, who didn’t care a straw about it, pretended they did to
gain their own ends. And it was these chaps, if you understand, who
finally made the Doctor so sick with natural history generally and old
Briggs for starting it.

My chum, West, began the rage for study of “our humble relations,” as
old Briggs called everything down to wood-lice. He let it be generally
known that he had two live lizards in his desk; and, this being the best
thing that West had ever thought of, the idea caught on well. I had a
dormouse myself, my name being Ashby minor, and Ashby major kept a
spider pretty nearly as big as a young bird, which he had poked out of a
hole in the playground wall. He caged it in a tin match-box, and fed it
with blue-bottles and wasps. At least, he got blue-bottles and wasps for
it, but the fool wouldn’t eat them; and after a week he found it with
its legs all tucked up as neatly as anything. Only it was dead. I
thought the match-box must have been too tight a fit for it, but Ashby
major did not. He believed there was something about a tin match-box
which must be rather poisonous for out-door spiders.

Then chaps went on collecting till it got to be swagger to keep big live
things in your desk; and the bigger the thing the more swagger it was.

Maine, generally known as Freckles, had a couple of guinea-pigs in his
desk for a week. Then Mannering, the classical master in the Fifth, who
must have had a nose like a gimlet, smelt them at prayers, happening to
come in late and kneeling down by Freckles at the time. The Doctor
didn’t make much fuss then, because that was just at the beginning of
the business; only he said a desk was not the place for guinea-pigs, and
added that a chap in Freckles’s position in the school ought to have
known it. He let the gardener look after them from that time forward.
But Freckles naturally lost all interest in them after the gardener had
them; because a guinea-pig merely _as_ a guinea-pig is nothing. Anyhow,
it was rough on him to be landed over it, because, as a matter of fact,
guinea-pigs have no scent worth mentioning, and nobody but Mannering
would have spotted them. After that Gideon and Brookes caught a
blind-worm one foot two inches long; and Gideon sold his half for
fivepence, so Brookes got it all. Nobody knew what a blind-worm likes to
eat, unfortunately, and it died, but not for a fortnight. Then there was
another scene with my dormouse, which led to tremendous things. There’s
a hole in a desk where the ink-pot goes in, and one day my mouse got out
through it, having climbed up two dictionaries and a Greek Testament to
do so. It happened old Briggs himself was taking the Lower Fourth, which
is my class, and I hoped it would be all right. But he didn’t seem
friendly over it, and I noticed, when he told us to find the mouse, he
put his feet upon the rungs of his chair. It’s a rum thing about old
Briggs that he doesn’t care much for natural history objects while
they’re alive; he likes them dead and dried, or stuffed and pinned on
cards, or in glass cases all labelled and neat. My dormouse gave us a
jolly good hunt round, then it finally tripped over a lead-pencil and
got its tail and hind legs into West’s ink. So we caught it, and I was
drying it with a piece of blotting-paper, and old Briggs was just
telling us that dormice belong to a genus of rodents called Myoxus, and
are allied to mice, though they have a squirrel’s habits, which he
seemed to think was a pity, when Dunston came in. The Doctor asked
particulars, looked as if he could have jolly well killed my mouse,
which was shivering rather badly owing to the ink on its hinder parts,
and said once for all that he would allow no animals of any kind inside
any of the desks or in school.

Then, unluckily, as an afterthought, he demanded a clearance on the
spot; and he was pretty well staggered to find the result.

“I will ask you, Ferrars, as head boy of the class, and one, I am happy
to think, above any of this childish folly, to inspect the desks, one by
one, and report to me where you find indications of life,” said the
Doctor.

Ferrars is always right with the Doctor, chiefly because he has a face
like a stone angel in church, and a very smooth voice, and a remarkably
swagger knowledge of the Scriptures. He is also a tremendous worker, and
will go into the Upper Fourth next term as sure as eggs. It was jolly
awkward for Ferrars then, because he happened to be one of the keenest
natural history chaps of all, and had a piebald rat, which even fellows
in the Sixth had offered him half-a-crown and three shillings for, yet
he would not part with it. So, though we didn’t like him much, we felt
almost sorry for the fix he was in now. Of course, we thought that such
a demon on Religious Knowledge as Ferrars would drag out his piebald rat
right away, and perhaps even give it to the Doctor, or offer to sell it
for the alms-box; but he didn’t. He got up, rather white about the
gills, and opened the desks one by one; and a jolly happy family it was.
Only the Doctor scattered the things to the four winds, till there
wasn’t an atom of natural history left in the whole class-room except
Ferrars’s piebald rat, snug in his desk.

First Fowle, who goes in for water things, had to empty his jam-jar of
tadpoles out into the playground, which was a beastly cruel thing to
make him do, because they all died, still being in the gill stage; then
Freckles was sent off with a young rabbit to the hay-field, and he got
caned too, because, strangely enough, the Doctor hadn’t forgotten his
guinea-pigs; and Morrant’s two sparrows were let go, which was no
kindness to them, because Morrant had cut their wings so jolly short it
would have taken them months to grow enough feathers to fly with, and
meantime a cat got them both; and Playfair’s mole, which, by-the-way,
had been queer for some time, owing to having no earth to burrow in, was
ordered to be sent to the cricket-field. There were a lot of other
things, but Corkey minimus scored rather, because his goat-sucker moth
laid a hundred and fourteen eggs on Todhunter’s algebra a few hours
before it was let free. Corkey minimus says a goat-sucker moth’s nothing
worth mentioning after it’s laid eggs, but the eggs turn into fine
caterpillars.

The few things the Doctor didn’t know what to do with, and didn’t like
to have killed, he said must be given to the gardener. He thought it
would be better to put my mouse out of its misery, and turned it over on
my hand with a gold pencil-case, and said it had probably got a chill to
its vital organs and would die; but old Briggs explained that it might
live if put in cotton-wool; so the gardener looked to it, and it did
live, and I took it home at the end of that term, and have it still,
though it is getting oldish now, and has lost half its tail. But it’s a
good mouse yet.

Of course the extraordinary thing was Ferrars. After the Doctor had
gone, old Briggs, to whom he had whispered something before he went,
gave out that his natural history half-hours would be suspended for the
rest of the term; then I got a word with Ferrars. I said:

“However did you have the cheek--you supposed to be such a saint?”

He said:

“I don’t know. Something came over me to do it. I’ve got a jolly
peculiar feeling to that rat. It’s not an ordinary rat. I’m wrapped up
in it. Even my respect for the Doctor couldn’t stand against it. I know
what you chaps think. I dare say you reckon I’m a hound, but I couldn’t
help doing what I did. Somehow that rat’s a sort of ‘mascotte’ to me. A
mascotte’s a thing that brings luck. All my best luck’s happened since I
had it.”

Of course, when a chap goes on like that, what can you do? I didn’t
understand Ferrars. He seemed to me to be simply talking rot. So I said:

“Well, it’s pretty measly, considering the opinion the Doctor’s got of
you. I sha’n’t try to score off your rat, because I know it’s a jolly
fine one, and I like it; but Freckles or somebody will very likely kill
it after this.”

He looked in a fair funk when the dreadful thought of having his rat
killed came to him. Before the end of that day he spoke to every chap in
the class separately, and all but three promised and swore not to lay a
finger on the rat. But Freckles, Murdoch, and Morrant wouldn’t swear.
Finally he paid Morrant sixpence and so got him over, and Murdoch he let
crib off him in “prep.” three times; and Freckles, who was an awfully
sportsmanlike chap really, said he was only rotting all the time, and
would be the last to do a classy rat like Ferrars’s any harm. In fact,
he said he’d much sooner kill Ferrars himself.

Mind you, though, of course, it was simply barbarous for Ferrars to
think that his piebald rat could have any effect on his work, yet he
proved to me that his success in school and his great popularity with
the Doctor dated from the coming of the thing. When he first got it, it
was a mere cub-rat, so to say; now, though not a year old, it had turned
into as fine a rat as you could wish to meet anywhere. In appearance it
had pink eyes and a white head, and a fairish amount of white fur about
the body, which got thinner on its stomach, so that you could see the
pink skin through to some extent. But the piebaldness of the rat was the
great feature. It had two big round patches of fur like the common or
garden rat, and one small patch at the nape of its neck; and in addition
to this it had one large patch of beautiful yellowish fur, such as you
chiefly see on guinea-pigs. Its tail was pink and long, and quite
hairless.

Ferrars often kept back good things at meals for it, and the bond
between them seemed to grow rummer and rummer, till he let the rat get
on his mind, and Wilson said he was getting dotty about it. Which I
think was true, for one day, going into the class-room to get a knife
from my desk, I saw Ferrars with his rat out, talking to it. He was
swatting like anything in play-hours for a special Old Testament history
prize, and he had the rat and the Bible and various books of reference
all before him. Then, not knowing I was there, he spoke:

“I must win it, ‘Mayne Reid.’ Stick to me this time, old chap, and see
me through.”

He called his rat “Mayne Reid” because that was his favorite author.

And “Mayne Reid” seemed to understand, and he turned his pink eyes on to
the open Bible and walked over it. Finding he’d walked over the ninth
chapter of the Second Book of Kings, Ferrars got excited, and, seeing
me, said, “By Jove! then I’ll learn that chapter by heart, though it is
so long. It’s good, exciting stuff, anyway, and I bet my rat walking
over it means that there’ll be a question about Jehu and Jezebel.”

“You’ll go cracked about that rat,” I said.

“It’s part of my life,” he answered. “I know it seems very peculiar, and
so it is, and I don’t suppose such a thing ever happened before, but
something tells me my prosperity and success is all bound up in that
rat. He’s a familiar spirit, in fact, like Saul had. If he died I should
never do much more good, and very likely stick in this class for the
rest of my days.”

“You’d better not think like that,” I said, “because rats are
short-lived things, owing to the nasty food they eat. Not that ‘Mayne
Reid’ has nasty food; but all pink-eyed animals are delicate, and you’ll
have to lose him sooner or later.”

Ferrars didn’t take warning by me, but after he really did win the Old
Testament prize, and there really was a question about Jezebel, he made
a sort of idol out of the rat, and some chaps declared he said his
prayers to it. I know he constantly bought it cocoa-nut chips, which it
was very fond of. He trained it, too, to live in his breast-pocket, and
I often saw him glancing down in class just to get a glimpse of its
little eyes looking up at him. That taking the piebald rat into class
shows the lengths Ferrars ran. The whole thing was very peculiar. Some
chaps said there was a strong likeness growing up between Ferrars and
the rat; and certainly his thin, white face had a rattish look
sometimes. Other fellows told him his rat was an evil spirit, and would
end by doing him a bad turn, but Ferrars turned upon them and jawed them
with such frightful language that they never said it again. Meanwhile
the Doctor went on taking to Ferrars more and more, and there seemed
every chance of his getting the whole Bible by heart before he left
Merivale.

Then came the end of the affair like this. Ferrars was so dependent on
his rat now that he wouldn’t do a lesson without it, and he lugged it
fearlessly into the Doctor’s study at those times, fortunately rare,
when the Doctor took our class himself in Scripture. But Ferrars was
such a flyer that we all got tarred with the same brush; and the Doctor,
after questioning Ferrars for half an hour about Bible people we’d never
even heard of, and getting a string of dead-right answers out of him,
would dismiss us all in great good temper, forgetting that he’d only
been having a go at one chap.

A day came when the Doctor left us for five minutes in the middle of
this class, and while most of us had a hurried dip into the plagues of
Egypt, which was the business in hand, Ferrars, who knew as much about
the plagues as ever Moses did, just got out his rat and gave it a bit of
almond and a short breather of a yard or so along the floor. But, the
Doctor coming back suddenly, he had only just time to pop it into his
pocket, and even then he put the rat into an unusual pocket which it was
not accustomed to, and didn’t like, namely, a trouser-pocket. Ferrars
also shoved a handkerchief down in the pocket to steady the rat.

Then I saw an awful rum expression come over him, and he grabbed at the
pocket and his mouth fell open, and his face got the color of new putty.
At the same time I saw his eyes turn to a big bookshelf with glass doors
against the side of the room.

“What’s the matter, Ferrars?” said the Doctor. “You appear unwell.”

“Nothing, sir; merely a little passing sickness, I think.”

“Then withdraw, my boy, and ask the matron to give you a few drops of
brandy and water. You need not dine to-day,” said the Doctor, very
kindly.

But Ferrars wouldn’t withdraw. He knew “Mayne Reid” had got through his
pocket and down his trouser-leg; he also knew it was now behind the
bookshelf, and might reappear at any moment. So he said he was better,
and, actually! that it would be a grief to him to miss one of the
Doctor’s own lessons.

But afterwards, when the rat didn’t come out and the class was
dismissed, Ferrars was frightful to see. His hair all got on end
somehow, and his eyes swelled and stuck out of his head like glass
beads, and his cheeks got hollow. He ran awful risks going into the
Doctor’s study that day, but the rat wouldn’t come out, and Ferrars
looked old enough to be a master when he went to bed, though only eleven
and a half really.

“One of two things has happened,” he said to me, for we were in the same
dormitory; “either it’s got wedged in behind the bookshelf and will die
if not let out, or else there was a rat-hole there, and it went down and
has joined common rats, and become a sort of king rat among them.”

“Or been killed,” I said.

“No, they would not kill it,” he answered. “Anyway, to-morrow, after the
Doctor’s class is over, and everybody has gone, I shall stop and make a
clean breast of it, and ask him, for the sake of humanity, to have the
bookshelf moved. But it’s all up with me if the rat has lost its feeling
towards me and won’t come back; only if it was stuck and couldn’t come
back, that’s different.”

He didn’t sleep much that night, but he said some prayers, which was a
thing he didn’t often do; and of course he was praying that the piebald
rat might be allowed to return.

But next day, after the Scripture class, in which Ferrars was not nearly
so much to the front as usual, and got regularly muddled over a potty
question about Jacob, the Doctor saved him the trouble of asking about
his rat. He--the Doctor, I mean--had been jolly glum all through class,
and when it was ended he did a rum thing, which was awful to see,
knowing all we did. He told us to keep our places, then went to the
fireplace and picked up the shovel. From the face of it he removed a bit
of newspaper, and under the newspaper was “Mayne Reid.” His pink eyes
had gone foggy, and there was a little streak of blood on his mouth.
Otherwise his body looked all right.

“Now here,” said the Doctor, in an awfully solemn way, “we have a dead,
piebald rat. There can be no outlet for error concerning such a rat as
this. To have seen such a rat is to remember it. Already three classes
have been before me to-day, but nobody knew anything about this animal.
That it was a tame rat its fatness and sleekness testify. Moreover, the
piebald rat is an outcome of artificiality. A wild rat in a state of
nature is brown or black, as the case may be. This rat, then, had an
owner, and that owner brought it into my study--_my study!_--and
suffered it to escape here. That I do well to be angry you will the more
easily understand when I tell you that the unsavory creature was upon my
desk last night, and has scratched and even eaten some papers whereon
were notes for my next sermon. It was discovered this morning by one of
the domestics. She, seeing some object moving upon my desk, struck with
the broom-handle, and destroyed this rat. Now let there be no
prevarication or evasion of the questions I am going to put to you.
First, I wish to know if this rat belongs, or rather belonged, to any
among you; and, secondly, I desire to learn whether, supposing the rat
be not the property of any present, you happen to know whose property it
is, or rather was?”

I stole a look at Ferrars, and he appeared so frightful to see, that for
some reason I thought I’d try and help him. So, like a fool, I was just
going to speak when young Corkey minimus did. He said:

“Please, sir, it might be a foreign sort of rat that came over in that
box of pineapples and things that Ashby major had sent him from the West
Indies.”

“When I desire your aid in the elucidation of this problem I will apply
for it, Corkey minimus,” answered the Doctor, so Corkey dried up.

Then, in a sort of voice that was strange to us, and seemed to come from
his stomach or somewhere new, Ferrars spoke, and I never saw a chap look
so ghastly. His eyes were fixed on the rat, and he came forward slowly.

“Please, sir, it was my rat,” he said.

“Yours, Ferrars! _You_ to disobey! You, of all boys, to set my orders at
defiance!”

“It wasn’t an ordinary rat, sir.”

“I can see what sort of rat it was, sir, for myself,” thundered the
Doctor. “This it is to consider a boy, to devote thought to him, to
particularly commend him for his theological knowledge.”

“I don’t take any credit for knowing anything now, sir. It was the rat
as much as me.”

“Robert Ferrars!” said the Doctor, in his caning voice, “you are now
adding wicked buffoonery to an act in itself sufficiently disreputable!”

“I can’t explain, sir; I don’t mean any buffoonery. That rat was more to
me than you’d think. It--it _did_ help me somehow, and now it’s dead it
wouldn’t be sportsmanlike to it to say not. And if you’ll let me b-bury
it properly, I’ll be very thankful to you.”

The Doctor looked at Ferrars awfully close during this speech.

“Either you are lying,” he said, “or you suffer from some hysterical and
neurotic condition, Robert Ferrars, which I have neither suspected nor
discovered until this moment.”

Then he told us to go; but Ferrars he kept for half an hour; and when
Ferrars came in to dinner I saw he’d been blubbing.

He explained to me after we’d gone to bed. He said:

“No, he didn’t cane me or anything. He just talked, and told me a lot
about several things I didn’t know, and said that familiar spirits were
specially barred in the Bible. I never thought he’d have even tried to
understand me; but he did, and he quite saw my side about the rat. He
said kind words over it, too, and was sorry it was dead. And I’ve got to
see Doctor Barnes to-morrow too, though, of course, it’s only having my
rat on my mind that’s upset me. And he let me have it to b-bury gladly.”

“Where shall you arrange the rat?” I said.

“I’m sending it home in a stays-box that Jane gave me. I’ve written to
my sister where to bury it. Jane it was who killed it. She cried like
anything when I told her what ‘Mayne Reid’ was to me. But he’s in the
book-post by now, beautifully done up in shavings and fresh geranium
leaves. It’s no good talking any more. Only I will say that if he was a
familiar spirit, he was a jolly good one, very different to the sort
barred in the Scriptures. I don’t know how I’ll get on in the exams.
now. I wish I was dead, too.”

Then he sniffed a bit, and went to sleep.




                        Browne, Bradwell, and Me


There’s more stuff torked about fagging at school than anything else in
the world, as far as I can see; and being the smalest boy but two at
Dunston’s, and a fag myself, I ought to know. Of corse, fags do get it
pretty hot sometimes if they happen to fag for a beast, but big fellows
aren’t beasts to small ones as a general thing. I’m sure Bradwell was
the best chap that ever came to Dunston’s, and when he was expelled over
the seege in the Wing Dormatery--him and Trelawny--I felt frightful. I’m
Watson minor myself, my brother being Watson major, one of the reserves
for the second eleven and captain of the third.

The thing I’m going to write out happened just before the seege, and was
all over before that; and it shows what a fag can do. It also shows what
a jolly good thing it is for big fellows to treat fags well, and give
them odds and ends so as to get their affecksun. If I hadn’t felt what I
did to Bradwell, I shouldn’t have run the awful risks I did for him.
What I did certinly ruined a great project of Bradwell’s, and upsett him
a good bit at the time. But he said afterwards, when the blow had
fallen, and when he could look back and think of it without smacking my
head, that I had ment well. I remember his very words, for that matter.
He said, “Your intenshuns were all right--I will say that--but you’ve
ruined my life.” No chap could say farer than that; and, mind you, I did
ruin his life in a way. I’ve heard many fellows say Bradwell was a
bounder by birth; but he never was to me.

Well, Bradwell had a great admeration for Mabel Dunston, the Doctor’s
youngest daughter but one, and she had an equal great admeration for
him, for two terms. Bradwell, although a great sportsman in other ways,
was fond of girls. If he passed a school of them he would look awfully
rum and reddish in the face an’ watery in the eyes. Once, going with him
to the playing-field for a football match, he made the distance half a
mile longer by going up a side-street to avoid the high-school girls;
and I asked him why, and he said it was cheek, but told me all the same.
He said, “You can’t meet women got up like this.” Bradwell has
frightfully thin calves to his legs when seen in “knickers,” though he
is the best goalkeeper that was ever known at Dunston’s. Of course, his
affair with Mabel Dunston would never have got to be known by me but for
my great use to Bradwell in carrying notes. Being in the Doctor’s house
that term I was easily able to do this, and there was a jar of green
stuff in the hall where she told me to leave the notes, which I did. She
was fifteen, I believe, or else sixteen, but well on in years anyway,
and a few months older than Bradwell. It was his general brillance won
her, for he could do anything, and his father had plenty of money, being
a man like Whitely’s in London, only in the North of England. Bradwell
drew almost as well as pictures in books, and he used to illustrate the
Latin grammar for his special chums. There’s a part of the Latin grammar
called Syntax, which I haven’t come to yet myself, but it has rather
rummy things in it, with both the Latin and English of them. And
Bradwell used to illustrate these things; and he illustrated two in my
grammar out of puer kindness to me. One was, “Balbus is crowning the
boy’s head with a garland”; and the other was, “A snake appeared to
Sulla while sacrifising”; and you never saw anything better. They were
done on the margin in ink, and the snake appearing to Sulla was about
the queerest and best thing even seen in a Latin grammar.

I have to tell you this because such a lot happened owing to it.

Now Browne took my class, which is the lowest in the school, and I am
seventh in it. And I gradually got to hate Browne, because Bradwell did,
and for other reesons of my own to. Browne was said to be only
twenty-two, and he looked younger than many of the chaps, his moustashe
being whitish and invisibel to the eye. He wore necktyes which I
remember hearing Mathers say were an insult to nature, and would have
made a rainbow curl up and faint. We always noticed, at arithmetic
times, that Browne, if he got a stumper, would put up the lid of his
private desk and hide behind it--of course, looking the thing up in his
crib. Then he would wander round, as if by accident, to the chap and do
the sum off quick while he remembered it. Bradwell always hated him; and
when he found that Browne was very friendly with Mabel and Mabel was
very friendly with Browne, he hated him far, far wurse.

Bradwell and this girl had a row in the shrubbery at the back of the
chapel, and I, being in the gardener’s potting-shed at the time, feeding
a cattipiller of mine, heard it. Bradwell said:

“I’m not blind, Mabel, I’ve seen it going on ever since last term. You
read his beastly books, and leave rosebuds with scented verbena leaves
round them in that stone urn at the gate when he comes down from his
house to class.”

And she said:

“And why shouldn’t I? You must remember, please, that I am my own
mistress. Besides, the intelligents of a grown-up man is very
refreshing.”

For some reason Bradwell didn’t like this. His voice squeaked up into
his head in a rather rum way when he answered:

“D’you call _him_ a man? He hasn’t got a muscle on him; and he doesn’t
know more than enough to teach the kids.”

“That’s merely mean jellousy,” said Mabel. “Of course, he doesn’t talk
to _you_, or show you what is in him. But he tells me all about his
secret life, and very butiful it is. He is a jenius, in fact.”

“If it comes to that, what can he do?” said Bradwell, awfully clevverly.
“Can he draw?”

“No, he doesn’t draw.”

“Oh! can he sing?”

“No.”

“Can he play the piano?”

“No.”

Now all of these things Bradwell could do to perfecksun, so he got
cheerfuller and cheerfuller.

“What _can_ he do, then, besides jaw the kids and always sneak to the
Doctor?”

“I never saw such jellousy as this,” said Mabel; “but if you must know
I’ll tell you what he can do: he can write poetry out of his own head,
and he has got a solid book of it reddy to print some day--there!”

I suppose Bradwell couldn’t write poetry. Anyway, he got very down in
the face at this. He didn’t say anything--appeering to be frightfully
shocked at what he’d heard. Then Mabel said:

“When you can quote Browning and Byron and Shelley, and write poems
yourself, it will be soon enough to sneer at Mr. Browne.”

“You love him,” said Bradwell, in a very tragik voice.

“I don’t love anybody but my own family,” said Mabel; “but I admire him,
and I admire his poetry, which is very much out of the common indeed.”

“It’s all over then, I suppose,” said Bradwell.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she replied to him. “A thing that has
never begun can’t be all over”; which words of Mabel’s seemed to knock
the heart out of Bradwell.

Then the gardener came along, and I didn’t hear anything else. Of corse,
I couldn’t _help_ hearing what I had done, though I tried hard not to,
and kept feeding my catterpeller like anything all the time.

Two days after I had to carry another note to Mabel, and found one
waiting for Bradwell in the usual place; so they must have made it up.
Then came the beginning of my misforchunes with Browne. He found the
snake appeering to Sulla in my Latin grammar, and called me up and said
he knew very well I hadn’t drawn it myself, but wanted to know who had.
He said it was wrong to the Doctor to ruin our books, and that he had
seen in several different books the same snake, evidently done by the
same boy, owing to them being so much similar.

But the very identical thing had happened in another class--to Steggles,
Bradwell having drawn him the same picture; and knowing what Steggles
said, being a chap who is frightfully cunning, I said the same now to
Browne. I said I left the book on my desk, and somebody came along and
done it while I was out of the room. Browne seemed inclined not to
believe this. Anyway, he took the Latin grammar away with him. But I
heard no more about it till the next evening, when I wanted the book in
prep. Remembering Browne had it, I went off to his study and knocked and
walked in.

Browne wasn’t there for the moment, and the room was empty. I took the
opportunity to look at a rather butiful tobacco-jar of Browne’s which I
have seen at a distance on his mantlepiece many times. Passing his table
to get to it, I chanced to glance there, and juge of my surprise when
the first words I saw at the top of a big sheet of paper were, "To
Mabel"! Underneeth was a lot of writing, and the whole table seemed to
be littered with paper covered with small bits of separate writing, much
of it scratched out and done over again. But the piece with “To Mabel”
at the top was all butiful and clean, without anything scratched, being,
I suppose, the result of all the other bits put together and neetly
copied out.

Well, there I was with my duty towards Bradwell as his fag. Browne had
evidently done a verse out of his own head for Mabel Dunston, and had
written it in this butiful style, on thick white paper, to send to her.
I felt if she got it, knowing what she’d said to Bradwell about Browne,
that it was certin she would abbandon Bradwell, him not being any good
at poems. I wouldn’t have done it for anybody else in the world _but_
Bradwell; I wouldn’t have done it at all if I had known what the end of
it was going to be; but, anyway, at the time it seemed to me, as
Bradwell s fag, I ought to do it; so I did.

I took the poem and rolled it up so as not to hurt it, and hooked off to
Bradwell. He was in his study, and Trelawny, who shares it with him,
being out of the room, I was able to explain. I said:

“If you please, Bradwell, I’ve come from Mr. Browne’s study, and he was
not there, and happening by a curious axcident to glance on the table I
saw this. Knowing about you and Mabel, and being your fag, I took it.”

“Took what?” said Bradwell.

I put the thing in front of him, and he got red and excited.

“It’s a poem to Mabel by that beast Browne,” he said.

Then he read it out, half to himself, but I heard. The thing ran like
this:

                               "TO MABEL

           “Oh let my Muse sing to the name of Mabel,
             Whose azure eyes are fastened to my soul,
             Like to forget-me-nots in button-hole.
           To tell of my heart’s torment I’m unable.
           My thoughts they spin; my brain it grows unstable
             When fixed on Thee. Perchance it is my rôle
             Never to reach my mad ambition’s Goal,
           But to live ever ’midst scholastic babel.
             Thy glances brighten all my lonely lot.
           Prometheus-like a vulture gnaws my heart,
             In biting blasts and under sunshine hot.
           My dreams are shattered by a barbed dart,
             And, waking wild, I scream that I may not
           Whisper the oaths I yearn to Thee impart.”

I told Bradwell I didn’t quite understand it, and he sat on me.

“You wouldn’t,” he said, “a kid like you. But I do. It’s a sonnit, and
an extramly fine one. I _hate_ the chap, but it’s no good pretending
he’s not a poet, because this jolly well proves he is. Look at the rimes
and the smoothness!”

It seemed a heroik thing of Bradwell to say that, feeling as he did to
Browne. He thought for a bit, but told me not to go.

“Of corse,” he said, “this must be returned. All’s fair in--in a case of
this kind, but--”

Then he thought very deeply and read the sonnit again. Suddenly he took
a bit of paper and copied down Browne’s poem word for word. Then he told
me to cut back like lightning to Browne’s study, and to put the poem
back on his desk if I could--if not, to most carefully keep it till the
first chance of getting it back to Browne’s room without being spotted.

“You’re a splendid fag,” he said, “and I shan’t forget this. It’s the
sort of thing that squires did for their knights in olden times; and
they got good rewards too. Now hook it.”

It’s worth a lot, mind you, to get praise like that from such a chap as
Bradwell.

When I got back, Browne was rumaging over his table and sweering a good
deal in a loud wisper. He told me to wait a minute, and went off to look
in his bedroom. Then I seezed my opportunity, and slipped the sonnit on
his table under some papers. When he came back he was worried, and went
on hunting till he found it. Then he said “Ah!” to himself, and got
pleasanter and asked me what I wanted. I told him my Latin grammar, and,
being in a very happy state now, owing to finding the poem, he gave my
book back and told me to clear out; which I did.

After prep. I met Bradwell going in to prayers, and he handed me a note
for Mabel to put in the usual place. He looked awfully rum when he gave
it to me, and he saw that I saw he looked rum. So he said:

“I don’t mind letting you know, owing to your being such a good fag and
my trusting you as I do. You may read the letter in prayers, then seal
it down and put it behind the pot of ferns in the hall in the usual
place.”

Of corse, it wasn’t really a letter, or Bradwell wouldn’t have let me
read it. It was just Browne’s sonnit coppied out by Bradwell word for
word; and at the bottom where the words, “What about poetry now?--A. T.
B.” A. T. B. are Bradwell’s initials, his full name being Arthur Thomas
Bradwell. You see, he didn’t exsaxtly say he’d _written_ the sonnit. He
only said, “What about poetry now?”

The excitement of it all kept me awake for hours and hours through the
night. I don’t suppose any fag ever did more for a big fellow than I had
done for Bradwell that day. Then I began to wonder when Browne would
send off his poem, and wether Mabel would get them both together or one
at a time. You see, of corse, Browne would send her the thing as
original, and there was nothing in Bradwell’s letter to exsaxtly say he
hadn’t written it; and puzzling the thing out for hours and hours, I at
last came to the conklusion that she would find it very difficult which
to believe, because how could she know which was telling the truth to
her? Then, about three or four in the morning almost, I began to feel
rather terrible over it, because I thought of what frightful trouble
Browne must have had to write the sonnit. He might have taken terms and
terms over it for all I could tell, not, of corse, knowing myself how
long it took to write poetry. I felt rather sorry for Browne; but after
all a chap’s duty is to the fellow he fags for before masters; and
feeling that, I went to sleep.

Three days later Bradwell had me in his room and told me the end of it
all, which shows that a girl never does what you might exspect.

“As a lesson to you, young Watson,” said Bradwell, “I may tell you that
my career has been utterly blighted and my life ruined by that business
of the sonnit.”

I said I was sorry to hear it.

He said:

“Yes, blighted; and so’s his--I mean Browne’s. She got my letter that
night and his next morning. That night she felt all her old feeling for
me return because of the sonnit, thinking I’d done it. Then, next
morning, she got just the very same stuff to a word from Browne, with a
letter saying he had burned the midnight oil to compose it. Well, there
you are. What does she do? Insted of accepting my statement, being the
first, she argues in a most elaborate way that I couldn’t possibly have
coppied from Browne, and Browne couldn’t possibly have copied from me.
But it would have been to much of a coinsidence if we’d both written
exsaxtly the same sonnit out of our own heads, so what does she
conklude?”

I said I didn’t know.

“Why, fathead, that we both coppied it from somebody else--out of some
book by some well-known proper dead poet. I’ve no doubt now, on thinking
over it, that Browne _did_ do that; because when I first read his poem I
could hardly believe that he had written such real poetry, owing to the
rimes and smoothness. But it’s all over now. She’s written a letter I
can’t show you. To hope even for her friendship wouldn’t be any good. A
girl hates a joke something frightful.”

“How about Browne?” I said.

“She’s written to him also, asking him where he got the verses out of,
and exsplaining she doesn’t believe they are original, and saying how
another acquaintance of hers had sent the very same lot the day before.
So now you see what a sinful mess you’ve made of it.”

I said I did, but I felt it was my duty to him.

“Yes, I know,” he said; “but the question is, What do I do now? You see
‘all’s fair’ and all that; but now, being out of the hunt, ought I to
throw up the sponge and tell the truth, or ought I not?”

“I don’t know, Bradwell,” I said; “but anyway you won’t mention me, I
hope, because I only acted for you, and did a jolly dangerous thing.”

“No, you’re safe enough, and, in fact, I’m going to reward you for what
you _did_ do,” said Bradwell. “But seeing I’m out of it, I think it will
be a manly act to Browne if I tell Mabel frankly that I resorted to
strateji.”

“But me?” I said.

“I shall merely inform her,” answered Bradwell, “that one of my
emissaceries found the poem, and, of course, brought it to me; that I
despatched it--as a joke, taking care not to say I was the auther. I
shall end with these words: ‘Browne is innosent.’”

All of which he did, and I left the letter in the usual spot. But Mabel
cut him altogether from that day; and he told me girls have no humer and
laughed it off, though he felt it a lot, and often smacked my head out
of bitterness of mind afterwards, but not hard. He gave me an old knife
for a reward, but told me at the same time never to do anything for him
again without being commanded.

As for Mabel, she threw over Browne just like she threw over Bradwell,
in spite of Bradwell’s letter; and Bradwell said it was a nemmecis,
whatever that is; and I had a nemmecis to, because a week afterwards
Bradwell threw over me and made young West his fag. I felt hert, but, of
corse, that didn’t get known to Bradwell; and if I fag again, I wont so
much as make a peece of toste unless I’m commanded to.




                          Gideon’s Front Tooth


I believe Gideon was the only Jew that ever came to Dunston’s, and I
expect, taking it all round, he might have had a better time at a school
for Jews in general; though in one way he wouldn’t have done as well,
and wouldn’t have had the adventure with old Grimbal, which turned out
so splendidly for him when old Grimbal died.

Though easily the richest chap at Merivale, and getting no less than ten
shillings a week pocket-money, Gideon was so awfully fond of coin that
he hardly spent a penny, and the only thing he did with his money was to
lend it to fellows. He didn’t lend it for nothing, having a curious
system by which you paid in marbles, or bats, or knives for the money,
and, in spite of that, still had to pay back the money itself after a
certain time. You signed a paper, and Gideon said that if chaps hadn’t
paid back the tin on the dates named it would be very serious for them.
But it got serious for him after a bit, because Steggles, who knew quite
as much about money as Gideon (though he never had any), borrowed a
whole pound once, and promised to pay five shillings for it for one
term; and Gideon was new to Steggles then, and agreed. But when the time
of payment came, Steggles said that Gideon had better regard it as a bad
debt, because he wasn’t going to pay back even the original pound. Then
Gideon thought a bit, and asked him why, and Steggles told him. He said:
“Because you know jolly well the Doctor doesn’t allow chaps to lend
money.”

And Gideon said:

“This is the first time I’ve heard that.”

“Anyway, it’s usury, which is a crime,” said Steggles, “and I’m not
going to pay anything; and, being less than twenty-one, you can’t make
me; so it amounts to a bad debt, as I told you just now. You’ve done
jolly well, one way and another, and you’ve got two bats, and Lord knows
how many india-rubber-balls, and cricket-balls, and silver pencils, and
knives out of it, including Ashby minor’s watch-chain, which is silver;
and if you take my tip you’ll keep quiet, because once all these kids
get to know anybody under twenty-one can borrow money without returning
it, then it’s all up with your beastly financial schemes.”

Gideon was remarkably surprised to know what a lot Steggles had found
out about him, and accused him of looking into his play-chest; and
Steggles said he had. Then Gideon went; and about three chaps who had
heard the talk told others, and they told still more chaps, until,
finally, a good many fellows who owed Gideon money felt there was no
hurry about paying it back till it happened to be convenient. In fact,
Gideon jolly soon saw he couldn’t do any more good for himself like
that, and at the beginning of the next term, when chaps were pretty
flush of coin, he wrote up in the gym, “There will be a sale of bats,
knives, and other various useful articles, between two and three
o’clock, by auction, on Tuesday.--J. GIDEON.”

Somebody tore it down, but not before most fellows had read it; and when
Gideon and young Miller, who had a bat in the auction, and hoped to get
it back if possible, were seen carrying Gideon’s play-chest to the gym
after dinner on the appointed day, of course we went. It passed off very
well for Gideon, because the things were really good, and often almost
new. He seemed to know all about auctions, and hit the chest with a
stump, and explained the things, and what good points they had about
them. He only took money down, and I will say nobody could have done it
fairer. If a knife had a broken blade, for instance, or a bat was
slightly sprung, which happened with one, he always pointed it out, so
that nobody could say he had been choused over it. Young Miller got back
his bat for four shillings and eightpence; and Ashby minor got back his
silver chain for thirteen shillings; but it wasn’t much good to him,
because, in order to raise the thirteen bob, he had to raffle the chain
at once, at shilling shares; and he took one, hoping to be lucky, but he
wasn’t, Fowle unfortunately getting it. Gideon told me afterwards that
the sale came out fairly, but not quite what he had hoped. He rather
sneered at the Dunston chaps in general, and said they were a
poverty-stricken crew; which got me into a bate, and I told him that I’d
sooner be the son of an officer in the Royal Navy, which I am, than the
biggest Jew diamond dealer in the world, his father being in that
profession. He said there was no accounting for tastes, but he should
have thought that a man who could deliberately go and be a sailor must
be weak in the head. Then I punched him, and he instantly went down and
apologized. I may mention that I am Bray, the cock of the Lower School.

Before coming to Gideon’s front tooth, just to let you know exactly the
chap he was, I’ll mention another thing he did. An old woman was allowed
to bring up fruit and tuck generally, and sell it to us after morning
school. Steggles, who knows the reason for pretty nearly everything,
said this was permitted by Doctor Dunston to take the edge off our
appetites; but anyway, the old woman sold strawberries and raspberries
in summer-time, and these were arranged with cabbage-leaves in little
wicker baskets at about fourpence each. Well, one day Gideon, who never
refused to eat fruit if offered it, but very seldom bought any, asked
the old woman what she gave for the wicker baskets, and she said
threepence a dozen. Then he asked her what she would give for those
which had been used once, and she thought, and said they would be worth
at least three halfpence a dozen to her. He didn’t say any more, but
after that it was a rum thing how all the used baskets, which generally
were seen kicking about the playground in shoals, disappeared. Nobody
noticed it at the time, but afterwards we remembered clearly that they
_had_ disappeared. And just at the end of the term a chap, hurrying in
late after the bell rang, came bang on Gideon and the old woman round a
corner out of sight of the gates. And the chap saw Gideon give her a
pile of baskets and get three halfpence. Of course, it was the last
three halfpence he ever got that way, because when it became known the
chaps rendered their baskets useless for commerce in many ways. And
Barlow called Gideon “Shylock minor” when he heard that he’d made two
shillings and fivepence halfpenny; which name stuck to Gideon forever.
And Steggles got nine other chaps to subscribe a penny each and buy a
pound of flesh from a butcher’s shop, because in Shakespeare Shylock was
death on his pound of flesh. The pound was put under Gideon’s pillow by
Steggles himself, and when Gideon shoved his watch under his pillow,
which he always did at night, he found it; and Steggles says he turned
pale, but read what was pinned on the pound of flesh, and then smiled
and wrapped the meat up in a letter from home, and said: “What fools you
chaps are, wasting money like that! But it looks all right, and will
mean a good feed for nothing.”

Next day he got up very early and took his pound of flesh down to the
kitchen and got them to cook it; and he ate about half before breakfast
and had the rest cold in his desk during Monsieur Michel’s lesson, which
was a safe time. And Steggles said we ought to have gone one better and
put poison on it.

The great affair of the tooth came on at the beginning of next term; and
first I must tell you that next door to Dunston’s lived an old man, so
frightfully ancient that his skin was all shrivelled over his bones. He
didn’t like boys much, but he would look over his garden-wall sometimes
into our playground and scowl if anybody caught his eye. Various things,
of course, went over the wall often, and it was one of the excitements
of Dunston’s to go into old Grimbal’s garden and get them back. Twice
only he caught a chap, and both times, despite his awful age and
yellowness of skin, he thrashed the chap very fairly hard with a
walking-stick; but he never reported anybody to Dunston, and it was
generally thought he regarded it as a sort of sport hunting for chaps in
his garden. Of course, in fair, open hunting he hadn’t a chance, and the
two he did catch he got by stealth, hiding behind bushes on a rather
dark evening.

Well, the facts would never have been known about this tooth but for
Gideon’s mean spirit. It happened to be necessary for him to fight me,
and though not caring much about it, he couldn’t help himself. Besides,
though the champion of the Lower School, I was tons smaller than Gideon,
and Gideon didn’t know till after the fight that I was a champion, the
true facts about my greatness being hid from him.

Just before the fight Gideon said: “Oh! my tooth, by the way. It may be
hurt, and it cost my father five guineas.” So, to our great interest he
unscrewed one of his two top front teeth and gave it to his second. You
couldn’t have told it was a sham, so remarkably was it done, and it
screwed on to the foundation of the original tooth much like a spike
screws into the sole of a cricket-boot. Gideon had fallen down-stairs
when he was ten and knocked off half the tooth, so he told us; but
Murray, who is well up in science, said that all Jews’ front teeth are
rather rocky, because in feudal times they were pulled out with pincers
as a form of torture, and to make the Jews give up their secret
treasures. Murray said that after many generations of pulling out Nature
got sick of it, and that in modern times the front teeth of Jews aren’t
worth talking about. Murray is full of rum ideas like that, and he hopes
to go in for engineering, having already many secret inventions waiting
to be patented.

As to Gideon, I licked him rather badly in two rounds and a half. Then
he was mopped up and dressed, and screwed in his front tooth again with
the greatest ease.

Once it got known about this tooth, and fellows were naturally excited.
Steggles said it was on the principle of a tobacco-pipe mouthpiece; and,
finding the chaps were keen to see it, Gideon let it be generally known
he would freely show it to anybody for threepence a time, and to friends
for twopence. But this was a safe reduction to make, because, properly
speaking, he hadn’t any friends. Seeing there were nearly 200 boys at
Dunston’s, and that certainly half, including several fellows from the
Sixth, took a pleasure in seeing the tooth, and didn’t mind the rather
high charge, Gideon did jolly well; and in the case of Nubby Tomkins, he
made actually one shilling and threepence; because the tooth had a most
peculiar fascination for Nubby, and he saw it no less than five times.
After that Gideon made a reduction to him, as well he might. But somehow
Slade, the head of the school, was very averse to Gideon’s front tooth
when he heard about it, and he decided that there must be no more
exhibitions of it for money. He told Gideon so himself.

However, a new boy came a week afterwards and heard about the
strangeness of the tooth, and offered a shilling, in three instalments,
to see it; which was too much temptation for Gideon, and he showed it,
contrary to what Slade had said.

Slade, of course, heard, for the new boy happened to be his own cousin,
though called Saunders; and then there was a curious scene in the
playground, which I fortunately saw. Slade came up to Gideon in the very
quiet way he has, and asked him in a perfectly gentlemanly voice for his
front tooth. At first Gideon seemed inclined not to give it up, but he
saw what an awfully serious thing that would be, and finally unscrewed
it, though not willingly.

“Now,” said Slade, “I’ll have no more of this penny peep-show business
at Merivale. I told you once, and you have disobeyed me. So there’s an
end of your beastly tooth. What’s this?”

He took something out of his pocket.

“It’s a catapult,” said Gideon.

“It is,” said Slade, “and I’m going to use your tooth instead of a
bullet, and fire it into space.”

“It cost five guineas,” said Gideon.

“Don’t care if it cost a hundred,” answered Slade, still in a very
gentlemanly sort of way. “We can’t have this sort of thing here, you
know.”

Slade was just going to fire into space, as he had said, when a robin
suddenly settled within thirty yards of us, on the wall between the
playground and old Grimbal’s. Slade being a wonderful shot with a
catapult (having once shot a wood-pigeon), suddenly fired at the robin,
and only missed it by about four inches. He said the shape of a front
tooth was very unfavorable for shooting. But, anyway, the tooth went
over into Grimbal’s, and we distinctly heard it hit against the side of
his house.

Then Slade went away, and we rotted Gideon rather, because not having
the tooth looked rum, and made a difference in his voice. He took it
very quietly, and said he rather thought his father would be able to
summon Slade; and before evening school, having marked down the spot
where he fancied his tooth had hit Grimbal’s house, he went to look with
a box of matches. What happened afterwards he told us frankly; and it
was certainly true, because, with all his faults, Gideon never lied to
anybody.

“I went quietly over, and began carefully looking along the bottom of
the wall, using a match to every foot or so,” he said, "and I had done
about half when I heard a door open. I then hooked it, and ran almost on
to old Grimbal. He had not opened the door at all, but was coming up the
garden path at the critical moment. Of course, he caught me. He was
going to rub it into me with his stick, when I said I should think it
very kind if he would hear me first, as I had a perfectly good excuse
for being there.

"He said:

"‘What excuse can you have for trespassing in my garden, you little oily
wretch?’

"‘Oily wretch’ was what he called me; and I said that my tooth had been
fired into his garden that very day, about half-past one, by a chap with
a catapult; and I lighted a match and showed him it was missing.

"He said:

"‘How the deuce are you going to find a tooth in a garden this size?’
And I told him I had marked it down very carefully, and that it had cost
five guineas, and that I rather believed my father would be able to
summon the chap who had shot it away. He seemed a good deal interested,
and said he thought very likely he might, if it was robbery with
violence. Then he asked me if I was the boy he had seen beating down the
price of a purse at Wilkinson’s in Merivale, and I said I was. Then he
said, ‘Come in and have a bit of cake, boy’; and I went in and had a bit
of cake, and saw on a shelf in his room about fifty or sixty
cricket-balls, and various things which he has collared when they went
over. He asked me a lot of questions about different things, and I
answered them. All he said was about money. He also asked me to be good
enough to value the things he had, which came over the wall from time to
time; and I did, and he thanked me. They were worth fifteen shillings
and tenpence; and Wright’s ball, which everybody thought was stolen by
the milkman, wasn’t, for old Grimbal’s got it; and the milkman should be
told and apologized to.

"Well, he knew a lot about money, and told me he had thousands of golden
sovereigns, which he makes breed into thousands more.

"He said:

"‘You’re the only boy I ever met with a grain of sense in his head. Now,
if I gave you a check on my bankers in Merivale for five pounds to-day,
and wrote to you to-morrow morning to say I had changed my mind, what
would you do?’

“I said, ‘It would be too late, sir, because your check would have been
sent off to my father that very night, to put out at interest for me.’
He said, ‘That’s right. Never give back money, or anything.’ Then he
asked me my name, and told me I might come back to-morrow and look for
my tooth by daylight.”

That was Gideon’s most peculiar adventure, and, though he never found
the tooth or saw old Grimbal again, yet about seven or eight months
afterwards, when old Grimbal was discovered all curiously twisted up and
dead in bed by the man who took him his breakfast, the result of
Gideon’s visit to him came out. Old Grimbal had specially put him into
his will by some legal method, and Doctor Dunston had Gideon into his
study three days after old Grimbal kicked. It then was proved that old
Grimbal had left Gideon all the things that came over the wall, and also
a legacy of fifty pounds in money, because, according to the bit of the
will which the Doctor read to Gideon out of a lawyer’s letter, he was
the only boy old Grimbal had ever met with who showed any intelligence
above that of the anthropoid ape.

Gideon returned all the balls and things to their owners free of charge,
but not until the rightful owners proved they were so. And the money he
sent to his father; and his father, he told me afterwards, was so jolly
pleased about the whole affair that he added nine hundred and fifty
pounds to old Grimbal’s fifty. Therefore, by shooting Gideon’s front
tooth at a robin, Slade was actually putting the enormous sum of one
thousand pounds into Gideon’s pocket, which I should think was about the
rummest thing that ever happened in the world.

Gideon stopped at Dunston’s one term after that. Then he went away, and,
I believe, began to help his father to sell diamonds. He was fairly good
at French, and very at German; but of other things he knew rather
little, except arithmetic, and his was the most beautiful arithmetic
which had ever been done at Merivale; for I heard Stokes, who was a
seventeenth wrangler in his time, tell the Doctor so.




                          The Chemistry Class


This story about Guy Fawkes’s Night at Dunston’s is worth knowing,
because it shows the rumminess of Nubby Tomkins. Tomkins, I may say, was
called “Nubby,” owing to his nose, which was extremely huge, though he
said it was Roman, and swore he wouldn’t change it if he could. Anyway,
Bradwell made a rhyme about it that is certainly good enough to repeat.
He wrote it first on a black-board with chalk, and a good many chaps
learned it by heart.

It ran like this:

                    “Our Nubby’s nose is ponderous,
                    And our Nubby’s nose is long;
                      So it wouldn’t disgrace
                      Our Nubby’s face
                    If half his nose was gone.”

Which was not only jolly good poetry, but also true--a thing all poetry
isn’t by long chalks, as you can see in Virgil and such like.

Well, Nubbs sang the solos in chapel on Sundays, and people came from
far to hear him do it; in consequence of which, so Steggles said, the
Doctor favored him, and regarded him as an advertisement to Dunston’s.
But his singing wasn’t in it compared with the advertisement he gave the
Doctor on Guy Fawkes’s Night the term before Slade left.

To explain the whole tremendous thing I must tell you that Nubbs
belonged to the chemistry class. This class, in fact, was pretty well
started for him, his father telling Dunston, so Nubbs said, that he
shouldn’t send him at all if he couldn’t be taught chemistry; because
Nubbs had shown a good deal of keenness for chemicals generally from the
earliest days, and bought little boxes of “serpents’ eggs” and red fire
instead of sweets ever since he was old enough to buy anything. He had
also blown off his eyebrows and eyelashes with a mixture he was grinding
up in a mortar, and they had never grown again to this day--all of which
things showed he had chemistry in him to a great extent. So the Doctor
started a chemistry class, and a chap called Stoddart, from Merivale,
came up once a week to take it; and Nubbs joined, and so did I, not
because I had chemistry in me worth speaking of, but because I was a
chum of Nubby’s. Wilson also joined, and so did Hodges. I may mention my
name is Mathers.

I always thought that chemists simply mix the muck doctors give you when
you’re queer, but it seems not. In fact, there are several sorts of
chemists, and Nubbs said he hoped to belong to the best sort, who don’t
have bottles of red and green stuff in the windows, and so on. He said a
man who sold pills and tooth-brushes, and liquorice-root and soap, could
not be considered a classy chemist. The real flyers made discoveries and
froze air, and sneaked one another’s inventions, and got knighted by the
Queen if they had luck and if they were well thought of by the
newspapers. I should think really Nubbs might come to being knighted if
he sticks to it, for even down to the stuff in cough lozenges nothing is
hid from him.

Once the matron gave me simply a vile lozenge for my throat, which got a
bit foggy owing to falling into the water during “hare and hounds.”
Well, the lozenge was white in color, but even a white lozenge may be
very decent sometimes, so I took a shot at it going to bed. But it was
so jolly frightful to the taste that I chucked it away, and next morning
found it again and examined it after drying. On it I then found the
words “Chlorate of potash.” So I took it to Nubbs. He said it was
certainly a chemical, and added that the stuff in it was almost the same
as you make “Pharaoh’s serpents” with. I could hardly believe such a
thing, so he lighted the lozenge and it burned blue, and a long,
wriggling, brownish ash came curling out of it like a snake, just as
Nubby said, which is well worth knowing to anybody who ever has a
chlorate of potash lozenge. Many such like remarkable and useful things
Nubby could tell you; among others, how to mix sulphur and gunpowder and
other ingredients for fireworks. He had, in fact, an awful fine book
devoted to the subject, and wooden affairs to load cases; and once when
Stoddart didn’t turn up and the Doctor put us on our honor to do the
proper things in the laboratory alone, Nubbs finished off analyzing some
mess in about five minutes, and spent the complete rest of the time
making a rocket. It had four blue stars and thirteen yellow ones, and
the case was made out of a stiff brown paper roll in which his mother
had that morning sent Nubbs a photograph of her new baby at home. And
Nubbs forgot the photograph and stuffed the mixture in upon it, and made
a separate compartment for the stars on top. So the photograph of
Nubby’s mother’s new baby, curiously enough, went off with the rocket,
and was never more seen by mortal eye. Not that Nubbs cared. He kept the
rocket till the Doctor’s birthday, and after prayers, when he knew he
was in his study, with the windows open and the blinds up, being
summer-time, Nubbs let it off in the front garden, and we helped. It
turned out very good in a way, though not quite a perfect rocket,
because instead of going up it tore along the ground. But it tore for an
enormous distance, and then turned and came back all of itself. And the
blue stars did not go off, but the yellow ones did--or some--in a bed of
rather swagger geraniums, unfortunately.

The Doctor didn’t care much about it, not understanding our motives. But
Nubbs explained that he had done it out of honor to the day. Then the
Doctor thanked him, and said he had doubtless meant well, and that from
the earliest times of the Chinese the pyrotechnist’s art had been
employed upon occasions of legitimate festivity and rejoicing.

I mention this because it was the encouragement he had over this
creeping rocket that made Nubbs get so above himself, if you understand
me. He never forgot it, and next autumn term he actually asked the
Doctor if he might have a regular firework display in the playground on
the night of the Fifth of November. He asked rather cunningly, just
after an English History lesson, during which the Doctor had been
slating Guy Fawkes frightfully; and having said such a heap of hard
things about the beggar, Doctor Dunston couldn’t very well refuse.

He said:

“Your request is unusual Tomkins; but I can see no objection at the
moment. However, I will let you have my answer at no distant date.”

And I said to Nubbs:

“That means he’ll think and think till he’s got a reason why you
shouldn’t, and let you know then.”

But Nubbs said to me:

“I believe he’ll let me do it, feeling so jolly bitter as he does about
Guy Fawkes.”

And blessed if he didn’t! Nubbs undertook to make the things himself.
Nothing was to be bought but chemicals in a raw, unmixed condition, and
Doctor Dunston actually headed the subscription list with 2_s._ 6_d._;
and Thompson gave the same, and Mannering 2_s._, and “Frenchy” 3_s._
Fifty-two chaps also contributed various sums from 1_s._ to 1_d._; and
Nubbs became rather important, and went down gradually to the bottom of
the Lower Fifth owing to the strain upon his mind.

He gathered together £2 7_s._ 5_d._ in all, and made it up to £2 10_s._
himself; and Fowle’s father, who was in some business where they used
sulphur in terrific quantities, got four pounds weight of it for
nothing, and Nubbs said it was a godsend for illuminating purposes. He
had been to the Crystal Palace, and told us he was going to carry
everything out just like they did there, as far as he could with the
money. At the last moment he got a tremendous increase of funds in the
shape of a pound from his father; and, strangely enough, it was that
extra pound that wrecked him. Without that father’s pound he couldn’t
have arranged the principal feature of the whole performance; and
without that principal feature nothing in the way of misfortunes to
Nubbs worth mentioning would have fallen out. But the pound came, and
with it a letter very encouraging to Nubby.

He went on mixing away at the various proper compounds and experimenting
with them till he got his rockets to go up like larks and his Roman
candles to shoot out stars the length of a cricket pitch. Then his
governor’s pound came, and he decided on having a set piece with it. A
set piece, Nubby said, is the triumph of the firework maker’s art--and
very likely it is in proper hands. You can have likenesses in fire, or
words, or ships, or “Fame crowning Virtue,” or, in fact, pretty well
anything. A set piece is designed small first, then large; and it is
worked out with little tiny things like squibs, only very small and
without any bang at the end. These are all lighted off at once, and they
burn one color first, then change to another. Nubbs said his would start
yellow, because it was cheaper, and finally turn green. The thing was
what design to have, and the four chaps in the chemistry class all
thought differently. I advised trying a shot at a huge portrait of the
Doctor, but when it came to particulars nobody knew how to work a
portrait; and Hodges thought we might do something about Guy Fawkes, but
Nubbs didn’t care about that. Then Hodges thought again, and suggested
the words, “God bless the Doctor,” and I agreed that it would be fine;
but Wilson said it was profane, and might annoy the Doctor frightfully,
especially when it turned green. Then Nubbs suggested the words, “Doctor
Dunston is a Brick!” and Hodges said that it was good, and Wilson said
it might be good, but it wasn’t true, anyway. However, it was three to
one, though we all admitted that, from his point of view, Wilson was
right to hate the Doctor, because the Doctor hates him.

The thing was to make a licking big frame of light wood, and arrange the
letters across it, and the note of exclamation at the end. This we did,
and hammered it against the playground wall, and wheeled up the screens
that go behind the bowler’s arm in the cricket season, and hid away the
set piece behind them till the time came. Likewise we arranged stakes
for the Roman candles, and a board for the Catharine wheels, and a
string for the flying pigeons, and so on. And also we rigged up bits of
tin round the playground and by the fir-trees at the top end and behind
the gym. These were for Bengal lights and other illuminations. All of
this Nubbs had arranged for the paltry sum of £3 10_s._ The chemistry
class had a half-holiday as the time drew on, and we worked like
niggers, all four of us. Nubbs commanded, so to speak, and mixed and did
the grinding and pounding and stars. Hodges and I hammered up the heavy
posts and stakes in the playground, and carried out odd jobs generally;
and Wilson manufactured cases for everything with brown paper and paste
and string.

The set piece took two hundred and thirteen little tubes. These Wilson
made in lengths of a yard and cut off at the required size. And Nubbs
stuffed them--with green fire first and yellow on top. It promised to be
a jolly big thing altogether, and four days before the night Nubbs began
to get awfully nervous, and to prepare yards and yards of touch-paper.

And Corkey minimus heard the Doctor say to Browne:

“Really the lads have devoted no little energy and method on their
proceedings; and it appears--so Mr. Stoddart tells me--that the boy
Tomkins has mixed his compounds quite correctly, thereby insuring that
brilliance and variety which is looked for in an exhibition of this
kind. I wonder whether we might ask the parents and friends of those who
dwell at Merivale and the immediate neighborhood.”

And Browne, who never misses a chance of showing the brute he is at
heart, said:

“Really, I should think twice, Doctor Dunston. There is such an element
of chance with amateur fireworks. Unfortunately, we can’t have a dress
rehearsal, as with the scenes from Shakespeare and the recitations at
the end of the term.”

“Nevertheless,” said the Doctor, “I am disposed to run the risk. A
little harmless pleasure combined with courtesy to relatives at mid-term
is rather desirable than not.”

So about fifty people were asked, and they brought fifty more, and the
cads from Merivale got to know too, and there was a good crowd of them
along the fence by the gym. Also two policemen came, and Nubbs, who was
nervous before, grew much worse when he heard of it. Besides, we had a
frightful shock two days before the firework night, owing to the loss of
poor old Wilson. By simply sickening luck he got reported by Browne for
cheek. It was when Browne came out in a new pair of awfully squeaking
boots with sham pearl buttons at the side and drab tops; and Wilson said
they were ugly “eighteens” and Browne heard him. The Doctor took an
awfully grave view of this, and told Wilson that personality was the
vilest kind of cheek. Which wouldn’t have mattered, but he gave him a
thousand lines as well, and forbade him to see the fireworks or help any
more with them.

“And that’s the man you call a brick!” Wilson said, rather bitterly. It
certainly was rough, after the way he had worked; but from the Wing
Dormitory, where he would be at the time, he might be able to see pretty
well everything by leaning far out between the window bars. Which Nubbs
pointed out to him, and he said he should. He also said he’d pay out
Browne some day, and very likely Dunston too.

Well, the night came, and it was a fine one; and the cads likewise came
and lined the fence. Then the Doctor clapped his hands twice, which was
the signal to begin; and just as he did so out burst yellow fire
everywhere behind the bits of tin, lighted simultaneously by seven
chaps. And everybody seemed to like it; and the Doctor said:

“Capital! Bravo, Tomkins--a pleasing and fairy like conceit!”

Then Nubbs let fly two rockets, and they went up well and burst out in
stars, though not as many by any means as we had crammed into them; but
one twisted for some reason, and, instead of falling in the direction of
the cads, the stick twinkled down, with just a spark of red here and
there in the line of it, bang behind the chapel. Both Nubbs and I
distinctly heard it go smack through the top of the greenhouse, and I
rather think the Doctor heard it too, for he didn’t say “Bravo” or
anything, but just sent a kid to tell Nubbs to point future rockets the
other way, which disheartened Nubbs, because he’s like a girl at times
of great excitement such as this was. But he soon cheered up, especially
at the splendid success of the Catherine-wheels, which he hadn’t hoped
much from, and at the cheers even the cads gave for the “golden rain”
which showed up everything as bright as day, including Maude and the
other Dunston girls, and Mrs. Dunston, and Nubby’s father standing
smiling very amiably by the Doctor, and the policemen blinking, and the
crowd, and a white dab hanging out of a high window afar off, which I
saw and knew to be Wilson.

Only the balloon failed, owing to the nervousness of Nubbs, who set fire
to the whole show while he was trying to light the spirit on the sponge
underneath; but he passed it off with crackers thrown among the kids,
and then, while they were all yelling, he dragged away the cricket
screens, and Nubbs let off the set piece. He lighted the touch-paper,
and it snapped and crackled all over the design in a moment, and a thick
smoke rose, and out of it came the set piece flaring in rich yellow
fire. Of course, we expected what Nubbs and Wilson had arranged, viz.,
“Doctor Dunston is a Brick!” but instead there came out these awful
words:

                            “DOCTOR DUNSTON
                              IS A BRUTE!”

That just shows what a frightful difference three letters will make in a
thing; and the night was so dark and the letters so big that you could
have read them a mile off. Only, if you will believe it, Dunston didn’t.
People applauded like anything at first, till the preliminary smoke
cleared off and they read the truth. Then they shut up and made a sound
like wind coming through a wood. But the cads yelled and roared, and so
did the policemen, for I heard them; and to make the frightful thing a
shade more frightful, if possible, the Doctor, who is as blind as ten
bats, and didn’t realize the end of the set piece, but only read his
name at the top, clapped his hands and said:

“Famous, famous! You excel yourself, Tomkins!”

Then the words began gradually to turn green; and, for that matter, so
did Nubbs. In fact, whether it was the reflected light or the condition
of his mind, or both, I certainly never saw any chap become so perfectly
horrid to look at as Nubbs did then. His nose seemed to stand out like a
great green rock, and his eyes bulged, and his chin dropped, and the set
piece turned his teeth as bright as precious emeralds. He just merely
said, “Good Lord!”--nothing more--then hooked it off into the darkness,
simply shattered.

At the same time Stoddart and Thompson, and Mannering and Browne, and
some chaps from the Sixth, not knowing what color the beastly set piece
might turn next, or how soon the Doctor would spot it, dashed at the
thing and dragged it down, and trampled on it; and Browne in the act
burned the very boots that Wilson had cheeked, which pleased Wilson a
good deal when he heard it.

After that it was all over, and the Doctor, thinking the set piece had
died a natural death, so to speak, saw me under the gas-light at the
gate, as everybody streamed out, and said:

“Ah, young man, what was that last word in the illumination? I know you
and Hodges also had a hand in it, as well as Tomkins.”

And I said:

“Please, sir, we arranged the words ‘Doctor Dunston is a Brick!’”

And he said:

“Excellent! Pithy and concise if a little familiar. I only hope you all
echo that sentiment--every one of you. Send Tomkins to me, and tell the
other fellows there is cake and lemonade going in the dining-hall.”

Just as if the other fellows didn’t know it! But everybody gave three
cheers for the Doctor and Mrs. Dunston, and I started to find Nubbs; and
the policemen made the cads go, though they went reluctantly.

I looked long for Nubby, and at last found him all alone in the gym. One
bit of candle was burning, which looked frightfully poor after all the
brilliance of the fireworks, and Nubbs had got the parallel bars under
the flying rings, and was standing on them--I mean the bars.

“What the Dickens are you doing, Nubby?” I said.

And he answered:

“It’s no jolly good attempting to stop me now, because it’s too late. My
life is ruined, and my father was there too to see it ruined; and I’m
going to hang myself, as every convenience for hanging is here.”

Mind you, he would have done it. Knowing Tomkins as I do, and his great
ingeniousness, I don’t mind swearing that he would have been a hung chap
in another minute. So I told him; but, though doubtful, he decided to
put it off, anyway. I even got him to promise he wouldn’t hang himself
at all if his father believed his innocence about the set piece. And
Crewe, the head-master under the Doctor, and old Briggs and Thompson got
us in a corner--Nubbs and Hodges and me--and we solemnly vowed we knew
nothing of it; and Crewe went down to the _Merivale Trumpet_ and made
the reporter put in the original words when it came out; and Thompson
explained to Mrs. Dunston how some evil-disposed, wicked person had
tampered with the set piece, and begged her not to wound the feelings of
the Doctor by telling him; and the Sixth hushed it up among the kids;
and I sneaked a bit of cake for Wilson, and went up after the row was
over and told him everything, down to the burning of Browne’s boots.

He confessed to me then that he had done it, which didn’t surprise me
much, knowing how he had worked, and then at the last minute almost been
deprived of seeing the show. It was certainly a terrible revenge; but,
of course, a terrible revenge which doesn’t come off owing to a master
being too shortsighted to see it is pretty sickening for the revenger.
Besides the risk.

Mr. Crewe worked like a demon to find out who had done it, and he
suspected Wilson from the first, but couldn’t prove it. But at last he
did find out through Fowle, who got it out of Ferrars, who got it out of
West, who got it out of Nubbs in a moment of rage. For I may say Wilson
himself told Nubbs, and Nubbs never forgave him, and says he never
shall, even if they ever both go to heaven.

So Crewe, having found out, had some talk with Wilson. But he didn’t
lick him; whereas Wilson did lick Fowle, and that pretty badly. Not that
Fowle cares for an ordinary licking more than another chap cares for a
smack on the head. The only way to hurt him is to twist his arm round,
about twice, and then hit him hard just above the elbow. I may say I
found this out myself, and everybody does it now.




                        Doctor Dunston’s Howler


Mind you, if it’s interesting to watch any ordinary person come a
howler, what must it be to see your own head-master do it? A “howler,”
of course, is the same as a “cropper,” and you can come one at cricket
or football or in class or in everyday life.

Dr. Dunston’s howler was a most complicated sort, and I had the luck to
be one of the chaps who witnessed him come it. Of course, to see any
master make a tremendous mistake is good; but when you are dealing with
a man almost totally bald and sixty-two years of age the affair has a
solemn side, especially owing to his being a Rev. and a D.D. In fact,
Slade, who was with me, said the spectacle reminded him of the depths of
woe beggars got into in Greek tragedies, which often wanted half a dozen
gods to lug them out of. But no gods troubled themselves about Dunston;
and it really was a bit awful looked at from his point of view; because
it’s beastly to give yourself away to kids at the best of times; and no
doubt to him all of us are more or less as kids, even the Sixth.

He often had a way of bringing the parents of a possible new boy through
one or two of the big class-rooms and the chapel of Merivale, just to
show what a swagger place it was. Then we all bucked up like mad, and
the masters bucked up too, and gave their gowns a hitch round and their
mortar-boards a cock up, and made more noise and put on more side
generally, just to add to the splendor of the scene from the point of
view of the parents of the possible new boy.

Sometimes the affair was rather spoiled by an aunt or mother or some
woman or other asking the Doctor homely sort of questions about sanitary
arrangements or prayers; then to see old Dunston making long-winded
replies and getting even the drains to sound majestic was fine. His
manner varied according to the people who came over the school.
Sometimes, if it only happened to be a guardian or a lawyer, he was
short and stern. Then he just swept along, calling attention to the
ventilation and discipline, and looking at the chaps as if they were
dried specimens in a museum; but with fathers or women he had a playful
mood and an expression known as the “parent-smile.” To mothers he never
talked about “pupils,” but called the whole shoot of us “his lads,” and
beamed and fluttered his gown, like a hen with chickens flutters its
wings. The masters always copied him, and to see that little brute
Browne trying to flutter over the kids like a hen when the Doctor came
into his class-room was a ghastly sight, knowing him as we did. Also the
Doctor would often pat a youngster on the head and beam at him. He
generally singled Corkey minimus out for patting and beaming; and Corkey
minor said the irony of it was pretty frightful, considering that Corkey
minimus, for different reasons, got licked oftener by the Doctor than
almost any chap in the Lower School.

Well, one day in came the Doctor to the school-room of the Fourth. I’m
in the Sixth myself, and a personal chum of Slade’s, the head of the
school; but I happened to have gone to the Fourth with a message, so I
saw what happened. A very big man who puffed out his chest like a pigeon
followed the Doctor. He had a blue tie on with a jolly bright diamond in
it, and there were small purple veins in a regular network over his
cheeks, and his mustache was yellowish-gray and waxed out as sharp as
pins. A lady followed him with red rims to her little eyes and gold
things hanging about her chest. The Doctor, being all arched up and
rolled round from the small of the back like a wood-louse, seemed to
show they were parents of perhaps more fellows than one. The big chap
wore an eye-glass and spoke very loud, and was jolly pleasant.

“Ah!” he said, “and this is where the little boys work, eh? I expect,
now, my youngster will be drafted in among these small men, Doctor
Dunston?”

“It is very possible--nay, probable in the highest degree, my lord,”
said the Doctor. “We are now,” he continued, “in the presence of the
Fourth and Lower Fourth. The class-room is spacious, as you see, and
new. A commanding panorama of the surrounding country and our
playing-fields may be enjoyed from the French windows. If two of you
lads will move that black-board from there, Lord Golightly may be able
to see something of the prospect.”

Two of the kids promptly knocked down the black-board nearly onto the
purple-veined lord’s head. Then suddenly the lady called out and
attracted his attention. Looking round, we found she had got awfully
excited, and stood pointing straight at young Tomlin. He was a mere kid,
at the extreme bottom of the Lower Fourth; but he happened to be my fag,
so I was interested. She pointed at him, in the most frantic way, with a
hand in a browny-yellow glove, and a gold bracelet outside the glove and
a little watch let into the bracelet.

“Good gracious!” she said, “do look Ralph! What an astounding
resemblance! Whoever is that boy?”

Tomlin turned rather red in the gills, which was natural.

“Do you know the lad?” asked the Doctor.

“Never saw him before in my life; but I hope he’ll forgive me for being
so rude as to point at him in that way,” she said. “He’s exactly like
our dear Carlo; they might be twins.”

Tomlin thought she meant a pet dog, and got rather rum to look at.

“Carlo is our son, you know,” explained the lord.

“Singular coincidence,” answered Doctor Dunston, not looking very keen
about it. In fact, he wasn’t too fond of Tomlin at any time, and seemed
sorry he should be dragged in now. But the kid was a very tidy sort,
really--Captain of the Third Footer Eleven and a good runner. He
happened to be the son of a big London hatter who had a shop of enormous
dimensions in Bond Street; and the Doctor was said to get his own hats
there; yet he didn’t like Tomlin.

Tomlin went out into the open, and the purple-veined lord shook hands
with him, and the lord’s wife stood him in the light and turned him
round to catch different expressions. Then they admitted that the
likeness was really most wonderful, and they both hoped Tomlin and Carlo
would be great friends. Tomlin, told by the Doctor to answer, stood on
one leg, twisted his arms in a curious way he’s got when nervous, and
said he hoped they might be; but he said it as though he knew jolly well
they wouldn’t.

Then the lord and the lady cleared out, and a week later Carlo came. His
real name was Westonleigh, and he was a viscount or something, being
eldest son of an earl; but we called him Carlo, and he grew jolly waxy
when he found his nickname had got to Merivale before him. He fancied
himself to a most hideous extent for a kid of nine, and explained he’d
only come for a year or so before going to Eton. He went into the Lower
Fourth, so Tomlin ceased to be at the bottom of that class.

The likeness between Carlo and my fag was really most peculiar. It must
have been for Carlo’s own mother to see it; but when Carlo heard that
Tomlin would be a hatter in the course of years he refused to have
anything to do with him. And Tomlin loathed Carlo, too, from the start;
so instead of being chums according to the wish of the purple-veined
lord, they hated one another, and the first licking of any importance
which Carlo got he had from Tomlin.

The chap was a failure all round, and it’s no good saying he wasn’t.
Everybody saw it but Doctor Dunston, and he wouldn’t. Carlo proved to be
a sneak and a liar of the deepest sort--not to masters, but to the
chaps; and he was also jolly cruel to animals, and very much liked to
torture things that couldn’t hit him back, such as mice and insects. He
had a square face and snubby nose, and a voice and eyes exactly similar
to Tomlin’s; but there was no likeness in their characters, Tomlin being
a very decent kid, as I have said. Fellows barred Carlo all round, and
he only had one real chum in the miserable shape of Fowle. Fowle sucked
up to him and listened for hours about his ancestors, and buttered him
at all times, hoping, of course, that some day he would get asked to
Carlo’s father’s castle in the holidays. I may also note Carlo never
played games, excepting tossing behind the gymnasium for half-pennies
with Fowle and Steggles, Steggles, of course, winning.

Happening one day to go down through the playground, young Tomlin saw
Westonleigh near a little fir-tree which grew at the top of the
drill-ground. He was alone, and seemed to be doing something queer, so
Tomlin stopped and went over.

“What are you up to?” he said.

“Frying ants,” said Carlo, “though it’s no business of yours. You see,
there’s turpentine juice come out of this tree where I cut it yesterday,
and you can stick the ants in it, then fry them to a cinder with a
burning-glass, like this.”

“That’s what you’re doing?”

“It is.”

“Don’t you think you’re rather a little beast?”

“What d’ you mean, hatter?”

“I mean I’m going to kick you for being such a cruel beast.”

They stood the same height to an inch and were the same age, so it was a
perfectly sportsman-like thing for Tomlin to offer.

“You seem to forget who you’re talking to,” said Carlo.

“No, I don’t--no chance of that. Your ancestors came over with William
the Conqueror--carried his portmanteau, I expect, then cleared out when
the fighting came on. Yes, and another ancestor stabbed a friend of Wat
Tyler’s when he was face down on the ground, after somebody else had
knocked him over. That’s what you are, ant-fryer.”

“I’ll thank you to let me pass,” said Carlo. “I’m not accustomed to
talking to people like you, and if you think I’m going to fight with a
future hatter you’re wrong.”

“Then you can put your tail between your legs and swallow this,” said
Tomlin, and he went on and licked Carlo pretty well. He also broke his
burning-glass.

“You’ll live to be sorry for this all your life!” yelled out Carlo, when
Tomlin let him get up off some broken flower-pots on the drill-ground.
“I’ll never forget it; I’ll get my father to make old Dunston expel you;
and when I’m a man I’ll devote all my time to wrecking your vile hat
business and ruining you and making you a shivering, starving beggar in
the streets!”

“Go and sneak, I should,” said Tomlin.

And blessed if Carlo didn’t! He tore straight off to the Doctor just as
he was, in his licked condition.

That much I heard from my fag, young Tomlin, but the rest I saw for
myself, as the Sixth happened to be before the Doctor in his study when
Carlo arrived. He was white and muddy, and slightly bloody and panting;
he looked jolly wicked, and his collar had carried away from the stud,
and his trousers were torn behind.

“My good lad, whatever has happened?” began the Doctor. “Don’t say you
have met with an accident? And yet your appearance--”

“Nothing of the sort,” said Carlo, who soon found out the Doctor had a
weak place for him, owing to his being a lord’s son. “I’ve been
frightfully and cruelly mangled through no fault of my own; and I
believe some things inside me are broken too.”

“Sit down, sit down, my unfortunate lad,” said the Doctor. Then he rang
the bell and told the butler to bring Viscount Westonleigh a glass of
wine at once.

“It’s Tomlin done it,” said Carlo. “He came up behind me, and, before I
could defend myself, he trampled on me and tried to tear me limb from
limb. I’m not strong, and I may die of it. Anyway, he ought to be
expelled, and I’ll write to my father, the earl, about it, and he’ll
make the whole country-side resound if Tomlin isn’t sent away and his
character ruined.”

“Hush, Westonleigh!” said the Doctor. “Have no fear that justice will
not be done, my boy. You shall yourself accuse Tomlin and hear what he
may have to say in defence.”

Then Tomlin was sent for, and in about ten minutes came.

“Is this true, boy Tomlin?” said the Doctor, putting on his big manner.
“One glance at your victim,” he continued, “furnishes a more conclusive
reply to my question than could any word of yours; nevertheless, I
desire to hear from your own lips whether Viscount Westonleigh’s
assertions are true or not.”

“Don’t know what he’s asserted, sir,” said Tomlin, which was a smart
thing for a kid to say. “If he said I’ve licked him, it’s true, sir.”

“That is what he _did_ assert, sir, in words chosen with greater regard
for my feelings than your own. And are you aware, George Tomlin, that
you have ‘licked’ one who, in the ordinary course of nature, and subject
to the will of an all-just, all-seeing Providence, will some day take
his seat in the House of Lords?”

“I’ve heard him _say_ he will, sir,” answered Tomlin, as though no
statement of Carlo’s could be worth believing.

“Don’t answer in that offensive tone, boy,” answered the Doctor, his
voice rising to the pitch that always went before a flogging. “If your
stagnant sense of right cannot bring a blush to your cheek before the
spectacle of your scandalous achievement, it will be necessary for
me--for me, your head-master, sir--to quicken the blood in your veins
and bring a blush to the baser extremity of your person. Some learn
through the head, George Tomlin; some can only be approached through the
hide; and with the latter category you have long, unhappily, chosen to
throw in your lot.”

Tomlin said nothing, but looked at Carlo.

“Before proceeding, according to my custom, I shall hear both sides of
this question--_audi alteram partem_, George Tomlin. Now say what you
have to say; explain why your lamentable, your unholy, your aboriginal
passions led you to fall upon Viscount Westonleigh from behind--to take
him in the rear, sir, after the unmanly fashion of the North American
Indian or other primitive savage.”

“I didn’t take him in the rear at all, sir,” said Tomlin. “I stood right
up to him, and he said he wouldn’t fight a future hatter.”

“A very proper decision, too, sir--a natural and wise decision,”
declared the Doctor. “Why should the son of Lord Golightly imbue his
hand in the blood of--I will not say a future hatter, for I yield to no
man in my respect for your father, Tomlin, and his business is alike
honorable and necessary; but why should he fight anybody?”

“If he’s challenged he’s got to, sir, or else take a licking.”

“No flippancy, sir!” thundered the Doctor again. “Who are _you_ to
announce the laws which govern the society of Merivale? Shall it be
possible in a Christian land, at a Christian college for Christian lads,
to find infamous boys with tigrine instincts parading the fold for the
purpose of smiting when and where they will? This, sir, is the very
apotheosis of savagery!”

“I didn’t do it for nothing, sir,” said Tomlin. “I’m not going to sneak,
of course; but I--I licked Carlo for a jolly good reason, and he knows
what.”

“Don’t know anything of the sort,” declared Carlo. “You flew at me like
a wolf from behind.”

“That’s a good one,” answered Tomlin.

“Anybody can see you did from the state I’m in,” said Carlo.

“You two boys,” began the Doctor again, “though you know it not, stand
here before me as types of a great social movement, I may even say
upheaval. In the democratic age upon which we are now entering, we shall
find the Tomlins at war with the Westonleighs; we shall find the
Westonleighs disdaining to fight, and the Tomlins accordingly doing what
pleases them in their own brutal way. Now, here I find myself met with
statement and counter-statement. The indictment is all too clear against
you, boy Tomlin, for even the glass of old brown sherry which he has
just consumed fails to soothe your unfortunate victim’s nerve-centres.
He is still far from calm; his ganglions are yet vibrating. This work of
destruction was yours. You do not deny it, but you refuse any
explanation, making instead a vague and ambiguous reference to not
sneaking. No man hates the tale-bearer more than your head-master, sir,
but there are occasions when the school’s welfare and the protection of
our little commonwealth make it absolutely necessary that offences
should be reported to the ruler of that commonwealth. I have no
hesitation in saying that Westonleigh saw the present incident in this
light. He had no right to hush up the matter. Whatever his private
instincts towards mercy, his duty to his companions and to me, together
with a hereditary sense of justice and the fearless instincts of his
race, compelled him to come before me and report the presence of a young
garroter in our midst. I select the word, George Tomlin, and I say that,
having regard to the perverted, not to say inverted, sense of justice
and honor all too common among every community of boys, Westonleigh’s
act was a brave act. I accept his statement in its entirety;
consequently, Tomlin, you may join me this evening, at nine o’clock,
after prayers.”

That meant a flogging, and Tomlin said, “Yes, sir,” and hooked it; but
the wretched Carlo thought he was going to hear Tomlin expelled. He
burst out and said as much, and the Doctor started as if a serpent had
stung him, and told Carlo to control the instinct of revenge so common
to all human nature, and explained that chaps were not expelled for
trifles. He reminded Carlo that Tomlin had an immortal soul like
himself, and seemed to imply that being expelled from Merivale would
ruin a chap’s future in the next world as well as this one. Finally, he
allowed Carlo, in consideration of the dressing he had got, to stop in
the playground that afternoon with a book. So the little skunk crept
off, shattered ganglions and all, pretending to walk lame; while the
Doctor, evidently much bothered altogether, took up our work where he
had left it.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Tomlin got flogged all right, and there the matter ended, excepting that
a lot of fellows sent Carlo to Coventry and called him “ant-fryer” from
that day.

Then, within three weeks, came the Doctor’s howler, Steggles being
responsible. Steggles is a bit of a hound, but his cunning is wonderful.
As for the Doctor, he continued making much of Carlo and sitting on
Tomlin, till one day, going into chapel, he unexpectedly patted Tomlin
on the head. Tomlin was rather pleased, because he thought the Doctor
was relenting to him; but when Steggles heard of it he said:

“Why, you fool, he thought he was patting Westonleigh!”

Then, on an evening when Tomlin was cooking a sausage for me in the
Sixth’s class-room, he said:

“Please, I should like to speak to you, if I may.”

So I chucked work, and told him to say what he liked.

“It’s only to show how things go against a chap, no matter what he
does,” said the kid. “This term I have been flogged for licking Carlo,
and caned three times since for other things, which were more bad luck
than anything else; and now I’ll be flogged again to-morrow for absolute
certain.”

“Why?”

“Well, it’s a jolly muddle. You know Steggles?”

“Yes, you’re a fool to go about with him,” I said.

“Perhaps I was. Anyway, Steggles and me made a plot to get some of the
medlars from the tree on the lawn, and we minched out after dark to do
it. They’re simply allowed to fall and rot on the ground, which is a
waste of good tuck, Steggles says. We went out about ten o’clock last
night, past Browne’s study window; and we looked in from the shrubbery
to see the window open, and soda-water and whiskey and pipes on the
table; but no Browne, strange to say. Then we sneaked on, and Steggles
suddenly heard something and got funky, but I kept him going. We reached
the tree and Steggles lighted his bull’s-eye lantern, so as to collect
the medlars, when suddenly out from behind the tree itself rushed a man.
We hooked it like lightning, naturally, and I never saw Steggles go at
such a pace in my life, and he stuck to his lantern, too; but I tripped
and fell, and before I could get up the man had collared me. If you’ll
believe it, the man was Browne! He asked me who the other chap was, and
I said I couldn’t be quite sure; so he told me to go back to bed, which
I did. That was last night; and the one medlar we had time to get
Steggles had eaten before I got back, which shows what Steggles is.
To-day Browne will tell the Doctor. He always chooses the evening after
prayers, so that he can work the Doctor up with his stories and get a
chap flogged right away; because it often happens when Doctor Dunston
says he’ll flog a chap next day he doesn’t do it.”

“And what is Steggles going to do?”

“He says he is watching events. He also says that Browne was certainly
stealing the Doctor’s medlars himself, and really we surprised him, not
he us; but, of course, Steggles says it’s no good my telling the Doctor
that. Steggles also says that he’s got an idea which may come to
something. I don’t know; but he’s a very cute chap. I’ve got to keep out
of the way after prayers to-night, and Steggles is going to watch
Browne. He won’t tell me his plan. I thought once that perhaps he meant
giving himself up for me, and I asked him, and he said I ought to know
him better.”

Tomlin then cleared out, and as the Doctor took Slade and me for a short
Greek lesson every evening after prayers, because of special
examinations, I had the good luck to see the end of the business that
very night.

We’d just got to work by the Doctor’s green-shaded reading-lamp when
Browne came in with his grovelling way, pretending he was awfully sorry
for having to round on Tomlin, but that his duty gave him no option, and
so on.

“Last night,” he said, “I was sitting correcting exercises in my study
when I fancied I saw a form steal across the grass outside. Thinking
some vagabond might be in the grounds, I dashed out and followed as
quickly as possible. Presently I saw a light, and noted two figures
under the medlar-tree. Fearing they might be plotting against the house,
I went straight at them, and, to my astonishment, saw that they were
only boys. One darted away, and I failed to catch him; the other, I much
regret to say, was Tomlin.”

That is how Browne put the affair.

“Tomlin again!” exclaimed the Doctor. “Positively that boy’s behavior
passes the bounds of endurance.”

“Yes, taking the medlars of one who has always treated him as you have.
I couldn’t trust myself to speak to him. He’s a very disappointing boy.”

“He’s a disgraceful, degenerate, disreputable boy! I can forgive much;
but the stealing of fruit--and that _my_ fruit! Greediness, immorality,
ingratitude in the person of one outrageous lad! I thank you, Browne.
Yours was a zealous act, and argued courage of high order. Oblige me by
sending Tomlin hither at once. There shall be no delay.”

Browne hurried off to find the wretched Tomlin; and Doctor Dunston, who
always had to work up his feelings before flogging a chap, snorted like
a horse, and took off his glasses, and went to the corner behind the
book-case where canes and things were kept. He seemed to forget Slade
and me, so we sat tight in the gloom outside the radius of light thrown
by the green-shaded lamp, and waited with regret to see Tomlin catch it.
The Doctor talked to himself as he brought out a birch and swished it
through the air once or twice.

“Upon my soul,” he said, “Lord Golightly’s son was right. His knowledge
of character is remarkable in so young a lad. Tomlin will have to be
expelled; Tomlin must go; such consistent, such inherent depravity
appears ineradicable. Pruning is of no avail; the branch must be
sacrificed. My medlars under cover of darkness! And I would have given
them freely had he but asked!”

He evidently wasn’t going to expel Tomlin this time, but he meant doing
all he knew with the birch; and as Tomlin was some while coming, the
Doctor’s safety-valves were regularly humming before he turned up. When
he did come he walked boldly in; and the Doctor, who had been striding
up and down like a lion at the Zoo, didn’t wait for any remarks, but
just went straight for him, seized him by the nape of the neck, nipped
his hand round his back--in a way he did very neatly from long
practice--and began to administer about the hottest flogging he’d given
to any boy in his life.

“So--you--add--the--eighth--com--mand--ment--to--the--others--you--have--already--shattered--deplorable--boy!”
roared the Doctor, giving Tomlin one between each smack.
“You--would--purloin--steal--rob--the medlars--of your preceptor.
You would lead others--to--share--your--sin. You would
bring--tears--of--grief--to--a--good--mother’s--eyes!”

Here the Doctor stopped a moment for breath, but he still held on to
Tomlin, who, much to my surprise, wriggled about a good deal. In fact,
he shot out his legs over and over again at intervals, like a
grasshopper does when it gets into the water; and when he got a chance
he yelled back at the Doctor:

“It’s a lie--a filthy lie!” he shrieked out. “Beast--devil! Let me go!
Let me go! I never touched your rotten old medlars--oh!--oh!”

Then the Doctor went off again.

“Silence, miserable child! Cease your blasphemies.
Falsehood--will--not--save--you--now!”

“I never touched them, I tell you, you muddle-headed old beast! You’re
killing me, and my father’ll imprison you for life for it. I wish they
could hang you. I’ll make you smart for this if you only live till I
grow up--devil!”

But the Doctor had shot his bolt. He gave Tomlin a final smack, then
shook him off like a spider, picked up his mortar-board, which had
fallen off in the struggle, and put the birch in its place.

“Now go, and don’t speak another word, or I shall expel you, wretched
lad!”

Meantime Slade and I were fairly on the gasp, for from the time that
Tomlin, as we thought, had called the Doctor a devil we realized the
truth. Now his passion nearly choked him; he danced with pain and rage;
only when the Doctor took a stride towards him he opened the door and
hooked it.

The Doctor puffed and grunted like a traction-engine trying to get up a
hill.

“These are the black days in a head-master’s life, Slade,” he said.
“That misguided lad thinks that I enjoyed administering his punishment,
yet both mentally and physically the operation caused me far greater
suffering than it brought to him. I am wounded--wounded to the
heart--and the exertion causes and will cause me much discomfort for
hours to come, owing to its unusual severity. I may say that not for ten
years has it been necessary for me to flog a boy as I have just flogged
George Tomlin. Now let us proceed.”

I couldn’t have broken it to him, but Slade did. He said:

“Please, sir, it wasn’t Tomlin.”

“Not Tomlin--not Tomlin! What d’ you mean, boy? Who was it, then?” said
the Doctor, his eyebrows going up on to his forehead, which was all
quite dewy from the hard work.

“It was young Carlo--I mean Westonleigh,” said Slade.

“Viscount Westonleigh!” gasped the Doctor, his mouth dropping right open
in a very rum way by itself, if you understand me.

“Yes, sir.”

“Then why in the name of Heaven didn’t you say so? How _dare_ you stand
there and watch me commit an offence against law and justice? How did
you dare to watch me ignorantly torture an innocent boy, and that boy--
Go! go both of you--you, Slade, and you, Butler, also. Go instantly, and
send Browne and Viscount Westonleigh to me. Good God! this is
terrible--terrible!”

So that was his howler, and to see him in his chair looking so old and
haggard and queer was rather frightful. He seemed suddenly struck with
limpness, and his hands shook like anything, and so did his bald head;
and he puffed as if he’d been running miles; and Slade said afterwards
that he looked jolly frightened too. He put his face in his hands as we
went out, and we heard him say something about Lord Golightly and ruin,
and universal opprobrium on his gray hairs, though really he had none
worth mentioning; and Slade said he almost thought the Doctor was
actually going to cry, if such a thing could be possible.

We sent Browne off to him, but Carlo wasn’t to be found. He’d been seen
yelling somewhere, but couldn’t be traced. What had happened was this:
Tomlin, in obedience to Steggles, had kept rather close after prayers;
in fact, he had spent the half-hour to bed-time in a cupboard in the
gymnasium, under the rubber shoes. So Browne, not finding him, had told
the first boy he saw to do so; and that boy happened to be Steggles, who
had been at his heels ever since he went to the Doctor. Steggles is a
miserable, unwholesome thing, but his strategy certainly comes off. Once
having the message, all was easy, because Steggles merely found Carlo,
and told him the Doctor wanted him. The result was much better than even
Steggles hoped; because, though the Doctor generally fell on a chap who
came to be flogged straightaway, like he did on Carlo, it wasn’t often
anybody got such a frightful strong dose as Carlo had. Afterwards, when
taxed, Steggles swore, of course, that he thought he was talking to
Tomlin. Seeing the likeness, this might have been perfectly true, though
in their secret hearts everybody knew Steggles too jolly well to really
believe it.

Carlo didn’t turn up, and after an hour or more of frantic rushing
about, somebody said perhaps he’d jumped down the garden well owing to
the indignity of what he’d got. But soon afterwards, in reply to a
special telegram sent for the Doctor by the people at the railway
station, an answer came from Golightly Towers, twenty miles off, where
the purple-veined lord, father of Carlo, hung out. The kid, it seemed,
had sloped down to Merivale railway station after his licking, and taken
a ticket right away for Golightly, and gone home by the last train but
one that night. He never returned either, but next day his father
dropped in on Doctor Dunston, and Fowle managed to hear a little of what
went on through the key-hole. He said that as far as he could make out
the lord didn’t think much of the matter, and said one thrashing more or
less wouldn’t mar Carlo. But the lord’s wife, who didn’t come, evidently
took the same view as Carlo, for he never returned to Dunston’s again.
The Doctor’s howler ended in his losing the little bounder altogether,
which, with his views about lords in general, and especially earls, must
have been frightfully rough on him.

As to Tomlin, actually the Doctor never flogged him after all! I think
his spirit had got a bit broken, and though Tomlin went at the end of
the term, he wasn’t expelled, but withdrawn by mutual consent, like you
hear of things in Parliament sometimes. He wouldn’t have gone at all,
but he refused to say who was under the medlar-tree with him, and stuck
to it; and Steggles absolutely declined to give himself up, because, as
he truly said, he had more than kept his promise to Tomlin about helping
him out of the mess.

So Tomlin went. He was a very decent little chap indeed, and nearly all
the fellows at Dunston’s promised faithfully to buy their hats entirely
at his place in Bond Street, London, when they left school; which will
be very good business for him if they do. As for the Doctor, it’s a
peculiar fact that for a whole term after Carlo’s affair he never
flogged a single chap. He didn’t seem to have any heart in him, somehow,
owing to the rum way the howler told upon his spirit.




                          Morrant’s Half-Sov.


Of course, as Steggles said truly, the rummest thing about the whole
story of Morrant’s half-sov. was that he should have one. Morrant, in
fact, never got any pocket-money in his life, owing to his father being
a gentleman farmer. Not that he had nothing. On the contrary, his
hampers were certainly the best, except Fowle’s, that ever came to
Dunston’s, both for variety and size and fruit. The farming business,
Morrant said, was all right from his point of view in the holidays, as
the ferreting, both rats and rabbits, was good enough for anything, and
three packs of hounds met within walking distance of his farm, one pack
being harriers, which Morrant, by knowing the country well, could run
with to a certain extent while they hunted. But Morrant’s father was so
worried about chemical manures and other farming things, including the
price of wheat, that he didn’t see his way to giving Morrant any
pocket-money. He explained to Morrant once that he was putting every
halfpenny he could spare into Morrant’s education, so as to save him
from having to become a gentleman farmer too when he grew up.

But Morrant didn’t get a farthing in a general way; so when there
arrived a hamper with an envelope in it, and in the envelope a bit of
paper, and in the paper a half-sovereign, Morrant was naturally
extremely surprised and also pleased. It came from his godfather, who
had never taken any notice of Morrant for thirteen years, though he was
a clergyman. But the previous term Morrant had got a prize for Scripture
history, and when that came to his godfather’s ears, through Morrant’s
mother mentioning it in a letter, he wrote and said it was good news,
and very unexpected. So he sent the money; and really Morrant was quite
bewildered with it, being so utterly unaccustomed to tin even in the
meanest shape.

He had a friend by the name of Ferrars, who was much more religious than
Morrant himself, and knew even more Scripture history; and as a first
go-off he asked Ferrars what he ought to do with the money. And Ferrars
said that before everything Morrant ought to give a tithe to charity.
But when it was explained to Morrant that this meant chucking away a
shilling on the poor, he didn’t take to the idea an atom. He said his
father had set him against giving tithes, not believing in them very
much.

So Morrant went to Gideon, who knew much more about money than Ferrars,
and he said on no account to give a penny away in charity, because
Morrant wasn’t up in the subject, and might do more harm than good. He
also said that in the case of a chap who had never had a half-sovereign
in his life before, it was a great question whether he could be expected
to give away any; and Morrant said there was no question about it at
all, because he wasn’t going to. And it made even a difference in his
feeling towards Ferrars, for, as he very truly said, a chap who advised
him like Ferrars had couldn’t be much of a friend.

Having decided to keep it, the point was what to do with it. The novelty
of the thing staggered him, and, knowing he would probably never have
another half-sovereign till he grew up, Morrant felt the awful
importance of spending it right, because an affair once bought could
never be replaced if lost. And, as Bray said, “If you get used to a
thing, like a watch-chain or a tie-ring, and then lose it, the feeling
you get is much worse than if you had never had it at all.”

I thought about it too for Morrant, as he once sent me a brace of
rabbits by post, shot by himself in the holidays. I pointed out to him
that half a sovereign was a most difficult sum really, being, as it
were, not small and not exactly huge, and yet too much to make light of,
especially in Morrant’s case. If he had got a sovereign, for instance,
he might have bought a silver watch-chain to take the place of one which
he had. It was made of the hair of his grandmother when she was young,
and Morrant didn’t much like it, and had often tried to sell it and
failed. But ten bob wouldn’t buy a silver chain worth having. Morrant
had an idea about braces, and of course he might have bought such braces
for the money as would have been seldom seen and very remarkable; but
braces are a poor thing to put good money into, and I dissuaded him.

There came a change in Morrant after he had had the half-sovereign for
four days and not thought of anything to buy. He began to worry, because
time was going on and nothing being done. Fellows gave him many ideas,
some of which he took for an hour or two, but always abandoned after a
while. Murray told him of a wonderful box of new conjuring tricks which
was to be had, and he nearly bought it, but luckily remembered just in
time that the new tricks would get old after a while, and some might be
guessed and would become useless. Then Parkinson had a remarkably
swagger paint-box, and knew where Morrant could get another with only
three paints less for ten shillings. And Morrant as near as a toucher
bought that, but happened to remember he couldn’t paint, and didn’t care
in the least about trying to. Corkey minimus said he would run the risk
and sell Corkey minor’s bat to Morrant for ten bob, the bat having cost
twelve. The bat was spliced and Corkey minor was in Australia, having,
luckily for him, sailed to sea just before an exam., owing to a weak
lung. If Morrant had played cricket he would certainly have bought the
bat; but there again, even though Gideon told him he might easily get
ten-and-six or eleven shillings for the bat next term, he hesitated, and
finally Gideon bought the bat himself--as an investment, he said.

Well, there was Morrant stuck with his tin. He wouldn’t even change it,
because Gideon warned him against that, and told him his father knew men
who had made large fortunes simply by not changing gold when they had
it. Gideon said there was nothing like never changing gold; so Morrant
didn’t, only of course there was no good in keeping the money specially
stitched into a private and unknown part of his trousers, as he did, for
safety.

That half-sovereign acted like a regular cloud on Morrant’s mind; and
then came an extraordinary day when it acted more like a cloud than
ever, owing to its disappearing.

Morrant had sewn it, with a needle and thread borrowed from the
housekeeper, into a spot at the bottom of his left trouser-pocket, and
from this spot it mysteriously vanished in the space of two hours and a
half. He had changed in the dormitory for “footer,” and left his
trousers on his bed at three o’clock, returning to them at 4.45. Then,
naturally feeling for his half-sovereign, he missed it altogether, and
when he examined the spot he found his money had been cut out of the
bottom of the pocket with a knife.

Very wisely Morrant, seeing what a tremendous thing had happened, did
not make a lot of row, but just told about ten chaps and no more. I was
one. My name is Newnes. I said:

“The first question is, Who knew your secret hiding-place?” and Butler
said it was a very good question and showed sense in me. Butler is, of
course, high in the Sixth.

Morrant, on thinking it over, decided that three chaps, or four at the
outside, knew his hiding-place. They were Ferrars, Gideon, Fowle, and,
Morrant thought, Phipps. So first Butler, who very kindly undertook the
affair for Morrant, had Phipps brought up. Phipps stammers even when
most calm and collected, and, being sent for by Butler, caused him so
much excitement that Butler made him write down the answers to his
questions, and even then Phipps lost his nerve so that he spelled “yes”
with two s’s. But he solemnly put down and signed that Morrant had never
told him where he kept his half-sovereign; and after he had gone Morrant
said that, now he came to think about it, he felt sure Phipps was right.
Which reduced the matter to Ferrars, Gideon, and Fowle; and the first
two were set aside by Morrant because Ferrars was, of course, his
personal friend, despite the passing coldness about Ferrars’ advice, and
Gideon, though very keen about money and a great judge of it, was known
to be absolutely straight, and had never so much as choused a kid out of
a marble.

Butler said:

“That leaves Fowle; and if you told Fowle you were a little fool.”

And Morrant said:

“We were both Roman Catholics by religion, and that makes a great tie;
and though many chaps hate Fowle pretty frightfully, I’ve never known
him try to score off me, except once, when he failed and apologized.”

And Butler said:

“That’s all right, I dare say; but he’s a little beast and a cur, and
also a sneak of the deadliest dye. I don’t say he’s taken the money,
because that’s a libel, and he might, I believe, go to law against me;
but I do say that only one out of three people could have taken it, and
we know two didn’t, therefore Q.E.D. the other must have.”

Morrant didn’t follow this very clever reasoning on the part of Butler.
He only thought that Fowle, being a Roman Catholic, would never rob
another; and Butler said he would, because it wasn’t like Freemasons,
who wouldn’t score off one another for the world. He explained that
history was simply choked up with examples of Roman Catholics scoring
off one another.

Butler said:

“Religion’s quite different. One Buddhist is often known to have done
another Buddhist in the eye, so why shouldn’t one Roman do another? In
fact, they have thousands of times, as you’ll know when you come to read
a little history and hear about the Spanish Inquisition. Especially this
may have happened seeing that Fowle is the chap. I tell you candidly
that, in my opinion, after a good deal of experience of fellows in
general, I take Fowle to be the most likely boy in Merivale to have done
it; and knowing him to have had the secret of the private pocket reduces
it to a certainty in my mind. Tax him with it suddenly in the night, and
you’ll see.”

Morrant slept in the same dormitory with Fowle, and that night the whole
room was woke up at some very late hour by the sound of Morrant taxing
Fowle. Fowle took a long time to realize what was being said, and when
he was awake enough to realize what Morrant was getting at, he showed
tremendous indignation, and asked what he had ever done that such a
charge should be brought against him, especially at such a time. He
reminded Morrant that they were of the same way of thinking in holy
affairs, and said he was extremely sick with Morrant, and thought
Morrant’s religion must be pretty rocky if it allowed him to wake a chap
up in the night and charge him with such a crime. In fact, Fowle went on
so that Morrant finally apologized rather humbly.

From that day forward began the extraordinary disappearance of coin in
general at Dunston’s. Shillings constantly went, and also half-crowns.
Gideon got very excited about it, and said watches must be kept and
traps set. There was evidently a big robbery going on, and Gideon said
if the chaps weren’t smart enough to catch the thief they deserved to
lose their tin. Certainly he never lost a penny himself. But, despite
tremendous precautions, money kept going in small sums. Ferrars was set
to watch in the pavilion, I remember, during a football match, and
Morrant himself, and even Butler once or twice, also watched. Some chaps
thought it was the ground-man; but as money also disappeared at school,
that showed it couldn’t be him. And then there was a theory that it
might be a charwoman who came from Merivale twice a week. I believe she
was a very good charwoman of her kind, and Ferrars, who is great about
helping the poor and so on, told me she was a very deserving woman with
a husband at home who drank, and children too numerous to mention. Which
Gideon remembered against the charwoman when the money began to go, and
it turned his suspicion towards her, because, as he said, with the state
of her home affairs, money must be a great temptation. So a watch was
set on her, and a curious thing happened.

Being small, I can get into a boot cupboard very easily, and I can also
breathe anywhere through a hole bored with a gimlet. This was done to
the door of the boot cupboard, and two other rather larger holes were
also made for my eyes. Mrs. Gouger, which was the charwoman’s name, had
to do a lot of work in this room--a large one leading out of the gym.
And there, on a certain half-holiday, I was watching her.

She worked jolly hard as far as I could say, and made a good deal of
dust, and a curious noise through her teeth when she scrubbed, which I
thought only men did when they washed horses; but there was nothing
suspicious, if you understand me. She didn’t touch a coat or anything,
though many were hanging against a wall; and the few caps about she
merely picked up and hung on the pegs.

Then, just before she finished, who should come in but Ferrars, and, to
my great astonishment, Mrs. Gouger courtesied to him as though he had
been the housekeeper or the Doctor.

Ferrars treated her with great loftiness, and evidently knew all about
her private affairs.

He said:

“And how is the child that’s got mumps?” and she said it was better. He
then gave her some advice about her husband, which I didn’t hear, and
she blessed him for all his goodness to her, and said God had sent him
to a lone, struggling woman, and that he would reap a thousandfold what
he had sown. All of which, coming from Mrs. Gouger to Ferrars, seemed
very curious to me. Presently he said:

“Well, I cannot stop longer. I’m glad the child is better. Keep on at
your husband about the pledge; and here’s a shilling.”

Then Mrs. Gouger put the shilling in her pocket and blessed him again.
And Ferrars went.

That very day young Forrest lost a shilling out of his desk, which
doesn’t lock, owing to Forrest having taken the lock off to sell to
Meadowes last term.

I told Butler and Gideon what I had seen, and Butler thought it rum, and
Gideon said there was more in it than met the eye.

Butler said:

“Evidently the kid” (Ferrars is a kid from Butler’s point of view) “has
given the charwoman tin before, or else she wouldn’t have blessed him.
Now the question is, How much pocket-money does Ferrars get?”

And I said:

“A shilling a week.”

“When does he get it?”

“Mondays.”

Butler said, “Ah!” but nothing seemed to strike him, and Gideon thought
that Mrs. Gouger ought to be spoken to. This Gideon undertook to do; and
the next week he did. What happened was that Mrs. Gouger said all that
she had before said to Ferrars about her husband and children, but added
that a young gentleman with a most Christian heart had lately interested
himself in her misfortunes. Gideon asked if it was a Dunston chap, and
Mrs. Gouger answered that she was not at liberty to say. She seemed
rather defiant about it, Gideon thought, and, in fact, when he pressed
her for the amount the chap gave her, she told Gideon to mind his own
business. A watch was still kept, especially on Ferrars; and once Butler
did an awfully cunning thing by setting Ferrars to watch and setting
another chap to watch Ferrars, if you follow what I mean. The other chap
was Butler himself, and the room was a dormitory. But it came out rather
awkwardly for Butler, because he sneezed at the very start, and Ferrars
got out from under the bed where he had arranged to watch, and found
Butler watching behind a coat against the wall. Then they had a row,
because Ferrars evidently thought Butler was there to watch him; which
he was.

The end of the affair came out rather tame in its way, and only shows
what awfully peculiar ideas some chaps have. Gideon finally spoke to
Slade, the head of the school, and though Slade doesn’t like Gideon,
owing to his way of making money by usury, yet it was such a serious
affair that he listened all through and promised to go to the Doctor.
Gideon had actually kept an account of all the money stolen, and it
amounted now to the tremendous sum of four pounds five shillings and
sixpence, including Morrant’s half-sovereign.

Then, after Dr. Dunston knew, we heard one day from Fowle that he had
sent for Mrs. Gouger to his study, and that she had been there fully
half an hour and come out crying. Fowle had listened as best he could
till the Doctor’s butler had come by and told him to hook it; but he had
heard nothing except one remark in the voice of Mrs. Gouger, and that
remark was, “Four pound five and sixpence, sir, and a godsend if ever
money was.”

Gideon said her mentioning of the exact sum was a very ominous thing for
Ferrars. And what was more ominous still happened that evening, for
Ferrars wasn’t at prep. or prayers.

There were a number of ideas about as to what it all meant, and Corkey
minimus, who always tries to get among chaps bigger than himself and say
clever things, came out with a theory that Mrs. Gouger was Ferrars’s
mother, and that Ferrars was therefore stealing and making the money
over to her. But Butler merely smacked his head when he heard it, and
told Corkey minimus not to be a little ass.

Gideon was the only chap who hadn’t any idea. He knew Ferrars’s great
notions about helping the poor and giving tithes to parsons, and so on,
but he said for a chap to steal money and hand it over to a charwoman in
charity was contrary to human nature. All the same, if a thing actually
happens, it can’t be contrary to human nature. Anyway, after prayers
next morning the Doctor stopped the school in chapel and explained
everything.

He said:

"My boys, while it is true that you come to Merivale to be instructed
by me and those who labor here among you on my behalf, it is also true
that I learn occasionally from those whom I teach. Indeed, new
problems are almost as often set by you for my solution as by me for
yours, and seldom has a more intricate difficulty confronted me than
that which yesterday challenged my attention. There has recently
happened among us a mysterious disappearance of coins of the realm.
Now a shilling, a sixpence, a penny-piece, if deposited in one spot,
will usually remain there until removed by human agency. And the human
agent who removes money which belongs to another without that other’s
sanction is a thief. Boys, briefly there has been a thief among you--a
thief whose moral obliquity has taken such an extraordinary turn,
whose views of rectitude have become so distorted, that even my own
experience of school-boy ethics cannot parallel his performance. This
lad has looked around him upon the world, and found in it, as we all
must find, a vast amount of suffering and privation, of honest toil
and of humble heroism, displayed by the lowest among us. He has also
observed that Providence is pleased to make wide distinctions between
the rich and the poor; he has noted that where one labors for daily
bread another reaps golden harvests without the trouble of putting in
the sickle. This extraordinary boy contrasted the position of one of
these humble workers with that of those among whom his own lot was
thrown here, and he found that whereas that obscure but necessary and
excellent person, Mrs. Gouger, she whose duty it is to cleanse, scour,
and otherwise purify the disorder produced by our assemblies--he
found, I say, that whereas Mrs. Gouger worked extremely hard for sums
not considerable, albeit handsome in connection with the nature of her
labors, others of the human family--yourselves--were in receipt of
weekly allowances of varying amounts for which you toiled not, neither
did you spin.

“This unhappy lad allowed his mind to brood on the apparent injustice of
such an arrangement, and instead of coming to his head-master for an
explanation of this and other problems which arose to puzzle his
immature intelligence, permitted himself the immoral, the scandalous,
the disgraceful and horribly mistaken course of righting the balance
from his point of view. This could only be effected by defiance of those
divine laws which govern all properly constituted bodies of human
society. Ferrars--I need not conceal his name any longer--Ferrars broke
one commandment in order to obey another. His fatuous argument, as it
was elaborated yesterday to me, stands based on error; his crime was the
result of the most complicated ignorance and vicious sophism it has ever
been my lot to discover in a boy of twelve. He did evil that good might
come. Ascertaining from the inspired Word that ’charity covereth a
multitude of sins,’ he imagined it must extend to cover that forbidden
by the Eighth Commandment. This commandment he broke no less than
fourteen times. You ask with horror why. That the domestic affairs of
Mrs. Gouger might be ameliorated. He took the pocket-money of his
colleagues, and with it modified those straits into which poverty and
conjugal difficulties have long cast Mrs. Gouger. It was Ferrars’s
unhappy, and I may say unparalleled, design to go on appropriating the
money of his school-mates until a sum of five pounds had been raised and
conveyed to Mrs. Gouger. Of this total, with deplorable ingenuity, he
had already subtracted from various pockets the sum of four pounds five
shillings and sixpence; it was his intention to continue these
depredations until the entire sum had been collected. But the end has
come. The facts have been placed before me, and I confess to you that
perhaps never have I been confronted with a problem more peculiar. After
a lengthy conversation with those who support me here, and after placing
the proposition before a higher tribunal than any which earth has to
offer, I have come to a curious decision. I have determined to leave the
fate of the boy Ferrars in your hands. This time to-morrow I shall
expect Slade, as representing the school, to inform me of your decision,
and to-day, contrary to custom, will be a half-holiday, that the school
may debate the question and conclude upon it. I would point out that
there is no middle course here, in my opinion. Either Ferrars must be
forgiven after a public apology to the establishment he has outraged, or
he must be expelled. As for the money, if those who have lost it will
apply to me between one and two o’clock to-day, each shall have his
share again.”

Well, you may guess what a jaw there was that afternoon; and finally,
after hours of talk, Slade decided the point must be arranged by putting
papers into a hat. If you drew a cross on the paper it meant that you
wanted Ferrars to be expelled; and if you drew a naught, that meant he
was to be let off. You were not bound to say how you voted, and the
excitement when the votes were counted was something frightful. Ferrars
little knew what was going on.

At last the numbers were read out:

                 For expulsion                     124
                 Against expulsion                 101

And Slade and Bradwell were mad when Slade read them, and said that
Merivale was disgraced. But Gideon and Butler and Ashby major and
Trelawny said not, and thought it wasn’t a case for anything but
justice. The Doctor made no remark when he heard what had happened, but
I heard him tell the new master, Thompson, a day afterwards that perhaps
the Lower School ought not to have been allowed to vote, as small boys
would merely have understood that Ferrars had stolen money and nothing
else. Their minds, the Doctor said, were not big enough to take in the
peculiar nature of the case. But Thompson said he honestly believed the
school was perfectly right, and that the subtleties of the case were not
for that court; and the Doctor sighed and said it might be so.

Anyway, Ferrars went. We never saw him again, and the only cheerful
thing about the end of it was that Steggles was badly scored off. You
see he nipped off to the Doctor among the first, and said Ferrars had
stolen ten shillings from him too. But it happened that Ferrars had kept
the most careful account of all the money he had raised for Mrs. Gouger
and the people he had raised it from. But he had never taken a farthing
from Steggles. So Steggles was flogged by Mannering in his best form;
which shows that things which are frightfully sad in themselves often
produce fine results in a roundabout sort of manner.




                             The Buckeneers


Of corse even a kid can get a good idea sometimes, and Maine, who I was
fagging for, said afterwards that the idea was alright. Whether young
Bailey or me thort of it first I don’t know, but Maine lent me a book
about coarseers and buckeneers and such like people, and he said it was
a great life, though not much followed in present times. He was no good
for a coarseer himself, becorse the sea always made him dredfully bad,
and, besides, he was going to be a bushranger some day, being an
Australian and well up in it. But he said that Drake and Raleigh and
many other men in our English history were buckeneers of the dedliest
sort and had made England what it was; so me and Bailey thort a lot
about it and wished a good deal we could begin that sort of life. Bailey
said that in the books he’d read, if a boy began young, he was generally
a super cargo and went on getting grater and grater slowly; but I thort
boys began as cabin-boys and got grater very quickly by resquing people.
But Bailey said that was only in books, and that nobody got on quickly
at sea owing to the compettitishun. He did not much think there were any
buckeneers left, but Maine said there were, cheefly off the coast of
Africa, and that daring and dedly deeds were done in the Mediterranan to
this day. He said the lawlessness there was awful, and that nobodi knew
what went on along the north side of Africa in little bays and inletts
there not marked on maps.

When Bailey herd that, he took more interest in it and wished he had
been born the son of a pirit insted of a doctor, because he said we
should have come eesily to it if our fathers had been in that corse of
life; but when I told Maine, he sed that the best and most splendid
pirits had had to overcome grate dificultees in their youth, and that it
was the pirit who began as a meer boy at school who often made the
gratest name.

Bailey sed he was a pirit at heart, and I sed I was to; but not untell
we red a butiful book by Stevenson could we see any way to be one
reelly. Then we saw that we must go away from Merivale in secret--in
fact, we must fly; and Bailey sed it would have to be by night to avoid
capture, and Maine sed it was so. But it was a tremendous thing to do,
and I asked Bailey about his mother, and Bailey sed his mother would
blub a good deal at first, but she would live to be proud of him when
his name was wringing through England. And I felt the same in a way,
becorse, though I have got no mother to blub, I have got an uncle, who
is my gardian, and he is a lawer and a Conservitive who has tried to get
into Parleyment and failed.

Then me and Bailey talked it out when chaps were asleep in our
dormitory, and the thing was what we should reelly and truly be, becorse
there were coarseers and buckeneers and pirits, and they all had their
own pekuliar ways. So we asked Maine which was best, and he sed
“buckeneers.” He didn’t seem to know exacktly what a coarseer was; but
he told us all about pirits, and he sed they kill womin and childrin,
and Bailey said he’d rather be a docter, like his father, than do that,
and I said the same. But a buckeneer is very diferent, being like
Raleigh and Drake; and a buckeneer may have his name wringing through
England, but a pirit never has, being rather a beast reelly. Maine sed
it was like this: a pirit always thinks of himself, and nobody else; but
the best sort of buckeneer thinks of himself, of corse, but thinks of
his country to; and after he has replennished his coffers he makes his
soverein a present of islands, and so on, which are gennerally called
after him, so that his name may never be forgottun. And Bailey sed that
was the sort he wanted to be, and I sed so to.

We thanked Maine a good deal, and he sed it was a big idea for such kids
as us to get, and hoped we were made of the right stuff, and promised
not to say a word to a soul. And we finally desided to try it, and
Bailey sed we must have a plan of ackshun; so we made one.

He said we must run away and work gradully by night to the coast and go
to Plymouth, and get into the docks, and find a ship bound for the north
coste of Africa. I asked him what next, and he sed, very truly, that
that was enuff to begin with, and that by the time we had done that much
manny adventures would have fallen to our lot, and we might alredy be in
the way to become buckeneers. And I sed I hoped we should make freends
at sea; but he sed the fewer freends we made the better buckeneers we
should probbably be, because it is not a life where you can make freends
safely. In fact, no reel buckeneer would trust his own brother a yard.
And I sed that we must trust one annuther at any rate. And Bailey sed,
as far as that went, he supposed we must; but he sed it relluctantly.

The thing was then to save up for the diferent weppons. Maine sed we
shouldn’t want arms, and that money was all we should require till we
got down south; but Bailey felt sure we must at leest have pistells,
becorse in books the man armed to the teath is never mollested if people
know, but the unarmed man often looses his life for want of a weppon. We
had one shilling pocket-money a week each, and Bailey getting a
birthday, very fortunately, made a whole pound by it after we had been
saving for three weeks. So between us we suddinly had one pound six
shillings, and Bailey sed it was share and share alike for the present,
and always would be unless some dedly hatred sprang up between us. And I
sed it never would; but he sed it might, and if it did, it would
probabbly be about a girl if books were true. And I larfed, becorse we
both have a grate contemp for all girls.

Well, things went alright, and on a half-holiday we managed to get to
Merivale and buy pistells. They were five shillings and sixpence each,
and the man didn’t seem to much like selling them; but we got them, and
amunition--fifty rounds each. And Bailey sed that would be enough. Maine
sed they were very good pistells for close work, but advised us never to
use them unless in soar straights. And we sed we wouldn’t.

It was the day of the menaggeree at Merivale that me and Bailey finally
took the grate step of going. We had collected a lot of food, and
studdied geography so as to get to Plymouth, and we arranged that we
should travel by night and hide by day in the hart of impennetrable
woods, which we did. After the menaggeree, at a certain point on the way
home, we slipped it round a corner, and Thompson didn’t see us, and in a
breef time we were at the edge of Merivale Woods, free.

“To-night,” Bailey sed, “we will get across this forest and do eight or
ten miles along the high-road, and so reach Oakshott Woods at dawn. They
are on the edge of the moor and quite impennetrable.”

So we got well into Merivale Woods first and made a lair of braken under
a fir-tree. And we cut off some of the fir-tree bark and licked the sap,
which is very nourishing and feeding, because we wanted to save our food
as much as possible. But we had each a cold sorsage and a drink of
water. And then night came on, and I felt, for the first time, that we
had done a tremendous deed.

“We’re fairly started,” I sed to Bailey. “It’s just call over at
Merivale now.”

And he sed, “Yes; if the fellows in the upper third could only see us!”

I sed, “It’s a small begenning.”

And he sed, “It is; but if things go rite, and we are made of the
propper stuff for buckeneers, we’ll make England wring yet.”

Then it began to rain rather hard, and I found that a wood isn’t really
a dry place by night if it rains, and Bailey lighted a match, and sed it
was nearly nine.

“That’ll mean ‘lights out’ at Merivale,” he sed; “but for us it’ll mean
the begenning of the night.”

I sneazed just about then, becorse water from the fir-tree was dropping
down my neck rather fast, and Bailey sed if I was going to get annything
the matter with me I had better go back at once, becorse no buckeneer
ever had a cold, being men of steel and iron. And I sed a sneaze was
nothing.

Then we started very corsiously through the wood, and Bailey cocked his
pistell, and I asked him kindly to walk in front, feeling a curious
sensashun when he walked behind me with his pistell cocked. I told him,
and he sed it was fear, but I sed it was kaution.

Sometimes he whispered, “Cave!” and we sunk down and got fritefully
dripping in the wet, but nothing happened, and we were getting well on
through the wood when Bailey sed, “Cave!” again, and this time, when we
had sunk down, we distinkly herd a footstep, and Bailey sed it was our
first adventure, and I sed I wished it had come by daylight, becorse it
wants grate practise to face adventures in the dark at first.

Anyway the noise got nearer and got louder, and Bailey and me both
cocked our pistells, and he sed, “Reserve your fire to close range,” and
I sed, “Yes.” Then he sed, “I see the thing. It’s bigger than a beast
you would expect in an English wood”; and I sed, “I have got a sort of
fealing it is something out of the menaggerie”; and he sed, “Then it
will be a real adventure, and I wish we were up trees.”

But it was to late, and something went quite close. I sore a red spark,
and Bailey sed, “Fire!” which we did. At leest my pistell went off with
fereful effect; but Bailey’s didn’t, and he sed afterwards that he’d
make the pistell man biterly rew the day he sold him a treecherous
weppon.

But after I fired we herd a human voice, and it sed, “Hell!” Then it sed
other fearful words, which Bailey sed we ought to remember because they
were buckeneering words curiously enuff. And then the man dashed towards
us, which showed I had not slain him, or even hit him in a vittle spot;
and we fled, and soon we found that we had distanced him, though we had
a squeek for it.

“He was a keeper,” sed Bailey, “and he will think we were poachers, and
raise a hue-and-cry. We must keep on and get into Oakshott Woods, or we
shall very likely have to yield to supereer force.”

After this eksitement I got a curious feeling in my stomach, and telling
Bailey, he sed it was either hunger or fear. And I sed it was hunger;
but Bailey sed, seeing what a hevy meal we had made with sorsage and
bred and turpentine juice only two hours before, that it was fear.

I sed if he thought so he’d better go on without me, as I hadn’t taken
to this corse of life to be cheeked by him. And he sed he was leeder of
the gang, and I was the gang, and the first thing was to lern to obey
orders. And then I got rather cross with Bailey, and asked him who he
thort he was to give me orders, and reminded him my pistell could go off
anyway, which was more than his could. This worried him a good deal,
becorse, of course, the man whose pistell went off had the best of it.
Then he sed that it was no good having a quarrel between ourselves while
we were not yet out of danger. He also said that he beleeved we might
venture to take one hour’s sleep to strengthen us before getting on to
Oakshott, and I sed, “Yes,” but thought that one of us ought to watch
while the other slept. Bailey said he would watch first, and he sed also
that we might get to the woodman’s hut in the middle of Merivale Woods
if we kept on past a ded fir-tree with its stem white, becorse all the
bark was off, which we did, becorse the moon was now shining very
britely, and the rain had stopped. The cold was also friteful, and my
teath chattered once or twice, but I broke sticks and things to attract
Bailey, becorse if he had herd my teath he would have sed it was fear
again.

Once a bough jumped back and hit Bailey a friteful smack in the face,
and I was glad, and he sed he rather thort his eye was done for; and he
sed it didn’t much matter if it was, so long as he had one good eye to
see with, becorse most buckeneers lost an eye sooner or later, though
generally with a stroak from a cutlass.

We found the hut, and there was some dry fern in it, and we lighted a
candle-end we had, and took off our boots, and wrung out our socks, and
each had half a currant dumpling. Then Bailey looked at his watch and
sed I might turn in for half an hour. Then he would wake me and turn in
for half an hour himself. He went on gard with another candle-end, and
advised me to draw my pistell and sleep with it cocked under my head.
But I sed I never herd of such a dangerous thing as that being done, and
kept my pistell reddy cocked near my hand. I didn’t fall off to sleep,
as I expected, owing to anxiaty as to our fate, but I shut my eyes and
thort a good deal, and after my eyes had been shut some time I opened
one a little and was grately surprised to see Bailey coming towards me
steelthily. He had his pistell in his hand, and first I had a horrible
thort he wanted to kill me, so that he mite have all our food and money;
and then I felt sure he was coming to change pistells, so that he might
have the one that went off. This made me get in a friteful wax with him,
becorse I saw he was very unreliable and not reely as much of a chum as
I had thort. So I waited untill I saw him stretch out his hand for my
pistell, and then I leapt at his throat in a very ferocious way, that
much surprized him. I also sed “Hell!” like the keeper had.

It must have been a solumn site by the lite of the candle-end when we
began to fight tooth-and-nail for the pistell which could go off. We
were both desperet, and it was reelly a battle to deside which should be
the leeder of the enterprise and which should be merely the gang. Then,
while we wresled and straned every nerve, a curious thing happened, for
we fell against the candle-end, stuck on the top of a stick, and the
candle-end fell against the side of the hut, and the hut, being made of
wood, with walls of dried heather, was very inflameable and cort fire
almost immediately.

And then Bailey sed we must aggree to settle our dispute later on and
fli at once. So we each took our own pistell, and were just going to
leave the scene, when, to our grate horror, we herd voices, and among
them the voices of Browne and Mainwaring, who were, of corse,
house-masters at Merivale.

Exhorsted though we were, me and Bailey made a terrible effort to
escape, and I think we mite have done so even then, but, oweing to the
moon and two other men who were with Mainwaring, we could not reach an
impennetrable part of the wood, and finally Mainwaring cort me, and a
man cort Bailey, and they dragged us into the light of the blazing ruins
of the hut, and we found out that Browne and Mainwaring had come after
us, like beestly blood-hounds, and had met the keeper, who told them he
had been fired upon, and then the unfortunate burning of the hut had
directed their steps towards us. And it’s a lesson in a way, showing
what risks it is for buckeneers to fall out among themselves at kritikal
moments.

Of corse we had to walk back merely as prisoners of Mainwaring, but
Bailey told me not to answer questions and rather let them cut our
tongues out than know the truth. So they didn’t get anything out of us,
and when we got back, at two o’clock in the morning, Dunston was up to
meet us; and by that time, what with cold and bruises and the failure of
the skeem, I wasn’t equal to defying Dunston, and merely sed we wanted
to change our corse of life for something different, and had started to
do so. And I also sed that burning the hut was an axsident which might
have happened to anybody. And Bailey sed the same.

Then Doctor Dunston sent for the matron, and we had brandy-and-water and
a hot bath, which was very refreshing to me, but Bailey sed biterly when
he was in it that he had thought that morning never to have had a bath
again. He also sed we should be put in sepperate bedrooms that night,
and that if either of us got an opportunety to eskape, it was his duty
to reskue the other. But I sed I didn’t want to eskape, being fritefully
sleepy and exhorsted, and I sed that if he eskaped he needn’t trubble to
reskue me, becorse if I returned again to being a buckeneer it certinnly
wouldn’t be with him.

I didn’t see any more of him until next day; then we were taken in like
prisinners of war before the school, and Doctor Dunston lecktured upon
us as if we were beests of pray, and he sed that a corse of falty
literatuer was to blame for our running away, and sed that the school
liberary must be reformed. But he never knew the grate truth, becorse he
sed we were onley running away to sea becorse of the fascenation of the
ocean to the British karacter, when reely it was to be buckeneers and
the terrer of the Mediterranan.

Maine showed us all the points we had done wrong afterwards, and he sed
the way we had fought for the best pistell was very interesting to him
and a grate warning not to trust in your fellow-creetures. And, after he
had lecktured upon us, Doctor Dunston flogged me and Bailey in publick,
which showed the stuff we were made of, becorse, though Bailey gets very
red when flogged, he has never been known to shedd a tear; and I get
very white, curiously enuff; but I have never been known to shedd a tear
either.

                                THE END

                           Transcriber’s Note

The text at times uses a semi-literate narrator’s voice and spelling.
Only two obvious punctuation errors have been corrected. The references
here are to the page and line in the original.

  198.18   in a cupboard in the gymnasium[./,] under the  Replaced.
           rubber shoes.

  201.10   flogged a single chap[,/.]                     Replaced.





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