Chapter Twenty Seven.A Little Victim.That same evening Singh went down the town to relieve his feelings and the heaviness of one of his pockets, for the day before both he and Glyn had received letters from the Colonel with their monthly allowance. Glyn had refused to join his companion, to Singh’s great annoyance, for the occurrences of the day had left him touchy and ready to take offence at anything.“I wouldn’t have refused to go with you,” he said. “It’s precious disagreeable, and you might come.”“Can’t,” said Glyn firmly. “I can’t come, and you know why.”“Oh yes, I know why; all out of disagreeableness. You haven’t got any other reason.”“Yes, I have. You haven’t written to father, have you, to thank him for what you got?”“No; I am going to write to-morrow.”“And then when to-morrow comes you’ll say the same, and the same next day. There never was such a fellow for putting off things.”“Well, you needn’t talk,” cried Singh. “You haven’t written to the Colonel to say you have got yours.”“No,” said Glyn firmly; “but I am going to write this evening.”“No, you are not. Come on down town with me. I want to go to the old shop. Do come, there’s a good chap! I hate going alone.”“Why?”“Because if I go alone I always see so many things I want to buy, and then I go on buying, and my allowance doesn’t last out till next time.”“Nonsense! What difference would it make if I came with you? You’d be just as bad,” cried Glyn.“Oh no, I shouldn’t. When you are with me you always keep on interfering and stopping me; and then the money lasts out twice as well.”“Well, look here,” said Glyn; “wait till I have written my letter, and I will make it a short one this time, and go with you afterwards.”“Oh, you are a disagreeable one! There won’t be time then, and it will be too late for going out. There, you see if I ask you to go again.”Uttering these words in his snappiest way, Singh whisked himself round and stalked off.“Can’t help it,” said Glyn to himself. “I will get it done, and then go and meet him. He’ll soon cool down, and there will be time enough to go to the shop and get back before supper.”But, all the same, Glyn uttered a low sigh as he thrust his hands into his pockets, to jingle in one the four keys that made his bunch, and in the other several coins which formed the half of the Colonel’s previous day’s cheque.The keys felt light in his right hand and the coins very heavy, and there was a something about him that seemed to suggest that they ought to be spent; but the boy turned his face rigorously towards the door of the theatre, when his attention was taken by Wrench’s tom-cat. He was crouching upon the sill of one of the lower windows, which was raised a little way, and evidently intently watching something within.“What’s he after?” said Glyn to himself. “Some bird got inside, I suppose, and flying about among the rafters.”Walking quietly up to see if his surmise were true, the cat did not hear him till he was quite close, when it bounded off the sill and made for the Doctor’s garden, to disappear among the shrubs.“I thought he was after no good,” said Glyn to himself; and, before making for the door, he peered in at the window in expectation of seeing a robin flitting about—a favourite habit these birds had of frequenting the long room and flying from beam to beam.But there was no bird, Glyn seeing instead the back of little Burton, seated at his desk with the flap open resting against his head, as he seemed to be peering in; and just then the little fellow uttered a low sob.“Poor little chap!” thought Glyn. “Why, that brute of a cat must have had one of his white mice, and he’s crying about it.”Glyn went in at once and crept on tip-toe in the direction of his own desk, where he was about to write his letter; but he contrived to pass behind Burton unheard, and stopped short, to find that he was right, for the little fellow was bending low into his desk crying silently, save when a faint sob escaped him, while his outstretched hands were playing with three white mice. The door of their little cage was wide open, and they kept going in and out, to run fearlessly about their master’s fingers, the cuffs of his jacket forming splendid hiding-places into which they darted from time to time, to disappear before coming out again to nestle in the boy’s hands.Glyn watched him for a few minutes, amused and pleased by the little scene and the affection that seemed to exist between the owner and the tame pets he kept within his desk.“Why, the cat hasn’t got one,” he said; “he’s only got three, and they are all there.”Just then there was a heavier sob than usual, and Glyn sympathetically laid his hand upon Burton’s shoulder.The little fellow gave a violent start, and the mice darted into their cage, as their owner turned guiltily round to gaze with wet and swollen eyes in his interrupter’s face.“Why, what’s the matter, youngster?” said Glyn, bestriding the form and sitting down by Burton to take his hand.“Oh, nothing, nothing,” said Burton hurriedly, trying to withdraw his hand; but it was held too tightly, and he had to use the other to drag out his handkerchief from his jacket-pocket and wipe his eyes.“You don’t cry at nothing,” said Glyn gently. “You are too plucky a little chap. I saw Wrench’s cat watching you, and I was afraid he had got one of your mice.”“No, no; the poor little things are all right. But you oughtn’t to have watched me, Severn.”“I didn’t. I was coming to my desk to write a letter to my father, only I heard you sob.”“Oh!” ejaculated the boy.“Come: out with it. You know you can trust me.”“Oh yes,” said the little fellow earnestly. “I know that, Severn. You always are such a good chap.”“Well then, why don’t you tell me what’s the matter?”“Because I was ashamed,” said the other, nearly in a whisper.“Ashamed! You! What of?”“Because it hurts so, and I couldn’t help crying,” faltered the boy; “and I came in here so as no one should see me. Don’t laugh at me, please!”“Laugh at you because you are in trouble and something hurts you! You don’t think I should be such a brute?”“Oh, I didn’t mean that, Severn,” cried the boy earnestly, as he now clung to his sympathiser’s hand. “I was afraid that you would laugh at me for being such a girl as to cry.”“But tell me,” said Glyn.“And I came in here to play with my mice, and it didn’t seem to hurt me so much then, because it kept me from thinking.”“Come, what was it?” said Glyn. “You are keeping something back.”The little fellow tried to speak, but it was some minutes before he could command his voice. Then out came the story of the brutal kick he had received, and of how hard he had struggled to conceal the pain.“A beast!” exclaimed Glyn. And then half-unconsciously, as if to himself, “I shall be obliged to give him another licking after all.”“Oh, do, please, Severn!” cried the little fellow joyously. “I’d give anything to be as big and strong as you, and able to stick up for myself; for, you see, I am such a little one.”“Oh, you will get big and strong some day,” said Glyn. “Only wait.”“Yes, I’ll wait,” said the boy; “but it will be a long time first, and old Slegge is going away at the end of this half, so that I can’t fight him myself. But I say, you will give him another licking, please?”“Well, we’ll see,” said Glyn. “I dare say he’ll make me before I have done.”“That’s right,” cried little Burton joyously; and he began to busy himself in putting his mice together, as he called it, and hooking the wire fastening before shutting up and closing the lid of his desk, while it was quite a different face that looked up into Glyn’s, as the boy cried: “There, it doesn’t hurt half as much now.”“If I were you I’d go and wash my face,” said Glyn.“What; is it dirty?”“Oh, it’s all knuckled and rubbed. You must have been crying ever so long; your eyes are quite swelled. There, be off. I want to write my letter.”While Glyn had been earnestly engaged comforting Burton and before he started his letter, he had not observed the return of Singh with his pockets looking bulgy and his face wearing a good-tempered smile.“Done?” he said, as Burton took his departure.“What, you back again?” cried Glyn. “I thought I should have been in time enough to come and meet you. If you had been another quarter of an hour I should.”“What; did you mean to come?” cried Singh joyously.“Of course.”“Oh, you are a good chap! Here, come on up to our room. Look here.”He slapped his pockets as he spoke, and half-held open that of his jacket, the thought of the succulent treasures contained therein having completely swept away all his past ill-humour.“Oh, I don’t know that I want anything to-night,” said Glyn.—“Yes, I do. I want to find little Burton. After we had gone away to-day Slegge kicked him brutally.”“What for?” cried Singh indignantly.“Because he wouldn’t bring an insulting message to fetch us back.”“Oh!” cried Singh. “And you wouldn’t stop and lick him! He’ll get worse and worse. Poor little chap! I like Burton.”“So do I,” said Glyn rather coldly.“What makes you speak like that?” asked Singh.“I was thinking about what I ought to do.”“To do? What do you mean?”“About giving him such a hiding as he deserves—that is, if I can.”“Oh, you can,” cried Singh joyously; “and you will now, won’t you?”“Well, I wasn’t going to because he was insolent to me; but now he’s been such a brute to that poor little chap I feel as if I ought to—and I will.”But somehow that encounter did not come off, and possibly the recollection of the active little white quadrupeds that were closely caged-up in the desk may have suggested the idea enunciated by the Scotch poet who said:The best-laid schemes of mice and menGang aft a-gley.So do those of boys; for something happened ere many weeks had elapsed, and before Glyn Severn had found a suitable opportunity for administering the punishment that he thought it was his bounden duty to inflict.In fact, the thoughts of Dr Bewley’s pupils were greatly exercised about the trouble that hung like a cloud over the school; and in its dissipation Glyn Severn and Singh had a good deal to do, while, oddly enough, Wrench’s cat played his part.
That same evening Singh went down the town to relieve his feelings and the heaviness of one of his pockets, for the day before both he and Glyn had received letters from the Colonel with their monthly allowance. Glyn had refused to join his companion, to Singh’s great annoyance, for the occurrences of the day had left him touchy and ready to take offence at anything.
“I wouldn’t have refused to go with you,” he said. “It’s precious disagreeable, and you might come.”
“Can’t,” said Glyn firmly. “I can’t come, and you know why.”
“Oh yes, I know why; all out of disagreeableness. You haven’t got any other reason.”
“Yes, I have. You haven’t written to father, have you, to thank him for what you got?”
“No; I am going to write to-morrow.”
“And then when to-morrow comes you’ll say the same, and the same next day. There never was such a fellow for putting off things.”
“Well, you needn’t talk,” cried Singh. “You haven’t written to the Colonel to say you have got yours.”
“No,” said Glyn firmly; “but I am going to write this evening.”
“No, you are not. Come on down town with me. I want to go to the old shop. Do come, there’s a good chap! I hate going alone.”
“Why?”
“Because if I go alone I always see so many things I want to buy, and then I go on buying, and my allowance doesn’t last out till next time.”
“Nonsense! What difference would it make if I came with you? You’d be just as bad,” cried Glyn.
“Oh no, I shouldn’t. When you are with me you always keep on interfering and stopping me; and then the money lasts out twice as well.”
“Well, look here,” said Glyn; “wait till I have written my letter, and I will make it a short one this time, and go with you afterwards.”
“Oh, you are a disagreeable one! There won’t be time then, and it will be too late for going out. There, you see if I ask you to go again.”
Uttering these words in his snappiest way, Singh whisked himself round and stalked off.
“Can’t help it,” said Glyn to himself. “I will get it done, and then go and meet him. He’ll soon cool down, and there will be time enough to go to the shop and get back before supper.”
But, all the same, Glyn uttered a low sigh as he thrust his hands into his pockets, to jingle in one the four keys that made his bunch, and in the other several coins which formed the half of the Colonel’s previous day’s cheque.
The keys felt light in his right hand and the coins very heavy, and there was a something about him that seemed to suggest that they ought to be spent; but the boy turned his face rigorously towards the door of the theatre, when his attention was taken by Wrench’s tom-cat. He was crouching upon the sill of one of the lower windows, which was raised a little way, and evidently intently watching something within.
“What’s he after?” said Glyn to himself. “Some bird got inside, I suppose, and flying about among the rafters.”
Walking quietly up to see if his surmise were true, the cat did not hear him till he was quite close, when it bounded off the sill and made for the Doctor’s garden, to disappear among the shrubs.
“I thought he was after no good,” said Glyn to himself; and, before making for the door, he peered in at the window in expectation of seeing a robin flitting about—a favourite habit these birds had of frequenting the long room and flying from beam to beam.
But there was no bird, Glyn seeing instead the back of little Burton, seated at his desk with the flap open resting against his head, as he seemed to be peering in; and just then the little fellow uttered a low sob.
“Poor little chap!” thought Glyn. “Why, that brute of a cat must have had one of his white mice, and he’s crying about it.”
Glyn went in at once and crept on tip-toe in the direction of his own desk, where he was about to write his letter; but he contrived to pass behind Burton unheard, and stopped short, to find that he was right, for the little fellow was bending low into his desk crying silently, save when a faint sob escaped him, while his outstretched hands were playing with three white mice. The door of their little cage was wide open, and they kept going in and out, to run fearlessly about their master’s fingers, the cuffs of his jacket forming splendid hiding-places into which they darted from time to time, to disappear before coming out again to nestle in the boy’s hands.
Glyn watched him for a few minutes, amused and pleased by the little scene and the affection that seemed to exist between the owner and the tame pets he kept within his desk.
“Why, the cat hasn’t got one,” he said; “he’s only got three, and they are all there.”
Just then there was a heavier sob than usual, and Glyn sympathetically laid his hand upon Burton’s shoulder.
The little fellow gave a violent start, and the mice darted into their cage, as their owner turned guiltily round to gaze with wet and swollen eyes in his interrupter’s face.
“Why, what’s the matter, youngster?” said Glyn, bestriding the form and sitting down by Burton to take his hand.
“Oh, nothing, nothing,” said Burton hurriedly, trying to withdraw his hand; but it was held too tightly, and he had to use the other to drag out his handkerchief from his jacket-pocket and wipe his eyes.
“You don’t cry at nothing,” said Glyn gently. “You are too plucky a little chap. I saw Wrench’s cat watching you, and I was afraid he had got one of your mice.”
“No, no; the poor little things are all right. But you oughtn’t to have watched me, Severn.”
“I didn’t. I was coming to my desk to write a letter to my father, only I heard you sob.”
“Oh!” ejaculated the boy.
“Come: out with it. You know you can trust me.”
“Oh yes,” said the little fellow earnestly. “I know that, Severn. You always are such a good chap.”
“Well then, why don’t you tell me what’s the matter?”
“Because I was ashamed,” said the other, nearly in a whisper.
“Ashamed! You! What of?”
“Because it hurts so, and I couldn’t help crying,” faltered the boy; “and I came in here so as no one should see me. Don’t laugh at me, please!”
“Laugh at you because you are in trouble and something hurts you! You don’t think I should be such a brute?”
“Oh, I didn’t mean that, Severn,” cried the boy earnestly, as he now clung to his sympathiser’s hand. “I was afraid that you would laugh at me for being such a girl as to cry.”
“But tell me,” said Glyn.
“And I came in here to play with my mice, and it didn’t seem to hurt me so much then, because it kept me from thinking.”
“Come, what was it?” said Glyn. “You are keeping something back.”
The little fellow tried to speak, but it was some minutes before he could command his voice. Then out came the story of the brutal kick he had received, and of how hard he had struggled to conceal the pain.
“A beast!” exclaimed Glyn. And then half-unconsciously, as if to himself, “I shall be obliged to give him another licking after all.”
“Oh, do, please, Severn!” cried the little fellow joyously. “I’d give anything to be as big and strong as you, and able to stick up for myself; for, you see, I am such a little one.”
“Oh, you will get big and strong some day,” said Glyn. “Only wait.”
“Yes, I’ll wait,” said the boy; “but it will be a long time first, and old Slegge is going away at the end of this half, so that I can’t fight him myself. But I say, you will give him another licking, please?”
“Well, we’ll see,” said Glyn. “I dare say he’ll make me before I have done.”
“That’s right,” cried little Burton joyously; and he began to busy himself in putting his mice together, as he called it, and hooking the wire fastening before shutting up and closing the lid of his desk, while it was quite a different face that looked up into Glyn’s, as the boy cried: “There, it doesn’t hurt half as much now.”
“If I were you I’d go and wash my face,” said Glyn.
“What; is it dirty?”
“Oh, it’s all knuckled and rubbed. You must have been crying ever so long; your eyes are quite swelled. There, be off. I want to write my letter.”
While Glyn had been earnestly engaged comforting Burton and before he started his letter, he had not observed the return of Singh with his pockets looking bulgy and his face wearing a good-tempered smile.
“Done?” he said, as Burton took his departure.
“What, you back again?” cried Glyn. “I thought I should have been in time enough to come and meet you. If you had been another quarter of an hour I should.”
“What; did you mean to come?” cried Singh joyously.
“Of course.”
“Oh, you are a good chap! Here, come on up to our room. Look here.”
He slapped his pockets as he spoke, and half-held open that of his jacket, the thought of the succulent treasures contained therein having completely swept away all his past ill-humour.
“Oh, I don’t know that I want anything to-night,” said Glyn.—“Yes, I do. I want to find little Burton. After we had gone away to-day Slegge kicked him brutally.”
“What for?” cried Singh indignantly.
“Because he wouldn’t bring an insulting message to fetch us back.”
“Oh!” cried Singh. “And you wouldn’t stop and lick him! He’ll get worse and worse. Poor little chap! I like Burton.”
“So do I,” said Glyn rather coldly.
“What makes you speak like that?” asked Singh.
“I was thinking about what I ought to do.”
“To do? What do you mean?”
“About giving him such a hiding as he deserves—that is, if I can.”
“Oh, you can,” cried Singh joyously; “and you will now, won’t you?”
“Well, I wasn’t going to because he was insolent to me; but now he’s been such a brute to that poor little chap I feel as if I ought to—and I will.”
But somehow that encounter did not come off, and possibly the recollection of the active little white quadrupeds that were closely caged-up in the desk may have suggested the idea enunciated by the Scotch poet who said:
The best-laid schemes of mice and menGang aft a-gley.
The best-laid schemes of mice and menGang aft a-gley.
So do those of boys; for something happened ere many weeks had elapsed, and before Glyn Severn had found a suitable opportunity for administering the punishment that he thought it was his bounden duty to inflict.
In fact, the thoughts of Dr Bewley’s pupils were greatly exercised about the trouble that hung like a cloud over the school; and in its dissipation Glyn Severn and Singh had a good deal to do, while, oddly enough, Wrench’s cat played his part.
Chapter Twenty Eight.Mr Morris prepares.Examination-Day was rather a frequent periodical affair at Dr Bewley’s. One month Monsieur Brohanne would have all the fun, as Glyn called it, an afternoon being devoted by the boys to the answering of questions, set by the French master, neatly printed upon a sheet of foolscap paper at the local printing-office, and carefully arranged upon a rough pad consisting of so many sheets of perfectly new blotting-paper upon each pupil’s desk.At another time it would be the Doctor’s day, and his examination-papers would be distributed. By the same rule, in due time in the periodicity, Mr Rampson would revel in Latin puzzles; and Mr Morris would request the young gentlemen to build up curious constructions with perpendiculars, “slanting-diculars,” and other varieties of the diagonal, in company with polygons and other forms of bodies with their many angles and curves, as set forth originally by a certain antique brain-puzzler of the name of Euclid, for the first part of the examination, the second portion consisting of that peculiar form of sport in which, instead of ordinary figures, the various letters of the alphabet were shuffled up and used for calculations, plused, minused, squared, and cubed up to any number of degrees, under the name of equations.It was one afternoon prior to Morris’s day, which was to begin at ten o’clock the next morning, and when the young gentlemen were all out in the play-field fallowing their brains for the next day’s work, so that they might begin rested and refreshed, this being the Doctor’s invariable plan, that Mr Morris was the only person in the establishment who was busy. He had received the foolscap sheets from the printer, carried them to his desk, upon which lay quite a pile of new thick white blotting-paper, and taking his seat, sat quite alone, chuckling with delight as he skimmed over his series of mathematical questions, one and all extracted from those which had been used at Cambridge.“Ha, ha!” he chuckled. “This will puzzle some of them! This will make some of them screw up their foreheads! The stiffest paper I ever set. Eh? What’s that?”He started up, looking round, for there had been a sound like a soft thump; but he could see nothing on account of intervening desks. But, all the same, Wrench’s tom-cat had leaped gently down to the floor, and from there he bounded on to one of the lines of desks, along which he stole very carefully, pausing to sniff at each keyhole as he leaned over, fully aware as he was that several of these desks were used as menageries, in addition to a very favourite one where he had paused more than once on account of the delicious black-beetly odour stealing up through the cracks, and which denoted white mice.In one desk silkworms began as eggs upon a sheet of paper, ate, and grew themselves into fine, fat, transparent straw-coloured larvae which afterwards spun cocoons. In another there were a couple of beautiful little green lizards; while one boy had his desk divided into two portions by means of a piece of board cut to a cardboard-plan by the Plymborough carpenter at a price. In one portion of the desk there were books and sundry tops and balls; the other was the home of a baby hedgehog, which lived upon bread and milk, and had a bad habit of sitting in its saucer.In the next row of desks there was rather an odorous creature which puzzled Tom a good deal; so much so that when the theatre was empty he made that desk a special spot for study in a very uncomfortable position, crouching as he did upon the slope with his head hanging over the edge and his nose close to the keyhole.That desk required much thought, for he was convinced by gliding sounds that there was a live occupant therein, and his impression was that it was good to eat; but he had never seen inside, and was not aware that it contained an ordinary grass-snake.Tom was convinced too, though he had never seen it, and was not aware of the differences in tails, that the inhabitant of another desk—enlightened as he was by sundry scratchings and gnawings—was a rat, though it was only Fatty Brown’s young squirrel, which was destroying the imprisoning wood in a way that was alarming to the owner of the desk.There were several other desks in the big theatre which gave forth sounds and excited Tom’s curiosity, for Dr Bewley’s young gentlemen affected zoology even as far as young birds, though not to any very great extent, as, not being nightingales, they did not nourish in the dark.But enough has been said to account for the cat’s love of study when the theatre was vacated by the pupils, and upon this particular occasion, taking little heed of Mr Morris, Tom went on investigating with his nose till he had reached the end of one series of desks, and, bounding across the intervening space, he came down with a thump upon the next, making Mr Morris look up sharply, snatch up a pocket lexicon, and send it flying, in company with the words, “Tsh! Cat!”The next moment he was alone; and, in perfect satisfaction with the stiffness of his papers, he descended from his place and proceeded to lay neatly along the rows before him a carefully doubled set of half-a-dozen sheets of white blotting-paper, till one stood out clear and clean upon every pupil’s desk.This done, he proceeded to work his way back by placing a blue printed sheet of foolscap upon each improvised blotting-pad. It was all carefully and neatly done, for Mr Morris’s mathematical brain led him to square the paper parallelograms, as he would have termed them, with the greatest exactitude, before going away to his own desk to gaze back over the blue and white patchwork before him, and give utterance once more to his thoughts regarding the puzzledom which would exist the next morning when the boys took their places.“A magnificent mental exercise,” he said proudly, before marching slowly down the big room like a mathematical general surveying the field where he was to do battle next day with the enemy in the shape of sloth and ignorance.So wrapped up was he in self that he passed out without noticing that he was watched by one who waited till he was out of sight, and then, though the door was open, preferred to enter by the window, leap on to a desk, and then slowly proceed from one to the other; not in a bold open way, but in a slinking, snaky, crawling fashion, as if about to spring upon some object of prey.The peculiarity of this was that it necessitated great extension of person; and as, after the fashion of all cats save those that belong to the Isle of Man, Tom carried his tail behind him, he went on in ignorance of the fact that more than once the furry end touched lightly in a more than usually well-filled ink-well, the result being an inky trail, which, however, dried rapidly in the warm theatre, and was not likely to excite notice upon unpainted desk-lids which were dotted with the blots and smudges made by hundreds of boys.But sometimes great discoveries come from very small things, and Wrench’s Tom played his part in one of the little comedies of life, those of Terence and Plautus not being intended here.
Examination-Day was rather a frequent periodical affair at Dr Bewley’s. One month Monsieur Brohanne would have all the fun, as Glyn called it, an afternoon being devoted by the boys to the answering of questions, set by the French master, neatly printed upon a sheet of foolscap paper at the local printing-office, and carefully arranged upon a rough pad consisting of so many sheets of perfectly new blotting-paper upon each pupil’s desk.
At another time it would be the Doctor’s day, and his examination-papers would be distributed. By the same rule, in due time in the periodicity, Mr Rampson would revel in Latin puzzles; and Mr Morris would request the young gentlemen to build up curious constructions with perpendiculars, “slanting-diculars,” and other varieties of the diagonal, in company with polygons and other forms of bodies with their many angles and curves, as set forth originally by a certain antique brain-puzzler of the name of Euclid, for the first part of the examination, the second portion consisting of that peculiar form of sport in which, instead of ordinary figures, the various letters of the alphabet were shuffled up and used for calculations, plused, minused, squared, and cubed up to any number of degrees, under the name of equations.
It was one afternoon prior to Morris’s day, which was to begin at ten o’clock the next morning, and when the young gentlemen were all out in the play-field fallowing their brains for the next day’s work, so that they might begin rested and refreshed, this being the Doctor’s invariable plan, that Mr Morris was the only person in the establishment who was busy. He had received the foolscap sheets from the printer, carried them to his desk, upon which lay quite a pile of new thick white blotting-paper, and taking his seat, sat quite alone, chuckling with delight as he skimmed over his series of mathematical questions, one and all extracted from those which had been used at Cambridge.
“Ha, ha!” he chuckled. “This will puzzle some of them! This will make some of them screw up their foreheads! The stiffest paper I ever set. Eh? What’s that?”
He started up, looking round, for there had been a sound like a soft thump; but he could see nothing on account of intervening desks. But, all the same, Wrench’s tom-cat had leaped gently down to the floor, and from there he bounded on to one of the lines of desks, along which he stole very carefully, pausing to sniff at each keyhole as he leaned over, fully aware as he was that several of these desks were used as menageries, in addition to a very favourite one where he had paused more than once on account of the delicious black-beetly odour stealing up through the cracks, and which denoted white mice.
In one desk silkworms began as eggs upon a sheet of paper, ate, and grew themselves into fine, fat, transparent straw-coloured larvae which afterwards spun cocoons. In another there were a couple of beautiful little green lizards; while one boy had his desk divided into two portions by means of a piece of board cut to a cardboard-plan by the Plymborough carpenter at a price. In one portion of the desk there were books and sundry tops and balls; the other was the home of a baby hedgehog, which lived upon bread and milk, and had a bad habit of sitting in its saucer.
In the next row of desks there was rather an odorous creature which puzzled Tom a good deal; so much so that when the theatre was empty he made that desk a special spot for study in a very uncomfortable position, crouching as he did upon the slope with his head hanging over the edge and his nose close to the keyhole.
That desk required much thought, for he was convinced by gliding sounds that there was a live occupant therein, and his impression was that it was good to eat; but he had never seen inside, and was not aware that it contained an ordinary grass-snake.
Tom was convinced too, though he had never seen it, and was not aware of the differences in tails, that the inhabitant of another desk—enlightened as he was by sundry scratchings and gnawings—was a rat, though it was only Fatty Brown’s young squirrel, which was destroying the imprisoning wood in a way that was alarming to the owner of the desk.
There were several other desks in the big theatre which gave forth sounds and excited Tom’s curiosity, for Dr Bewley’s young gentlemen affected zoology even as far as young birds, though not to any very great extent, as, not being nightingales, they did not nourish in the dark.
But enough has been said to account for the cat’s love of study when the theatre was vacated by the pupils, and upon this particular occasion, taking little heed of Mr Morris, Tom went on investigating with his nose till he had reached the end of one series of desks, and, bounding across the intervening space, he came down with a thump upon the next, making Mr Morris look up sharply, snatch up a pocket lexicon, and send it flying, in company with the words, “Tsh! Cat!”
The next moment he was alone; and, in perfect satisfaction with the stiffness of his papers, he descended from his place and proceeded to lay neatly along the rows before him a carefully doubled set of half-a-dozen sheets of white blotting-paper, till one stood out clear and clean upon every pupil’s desk.
This done, he proceeded to work his way back by placing a blue printed sheet of foolscap upon each improvised blotting-pad. It was all carefully and neatly done, for Mr Morris’s mathematical brain led him to square the paper parallelograms, as he would have termed them, with the greatest exactitude, before going away to his own desk to gaze back over the blue and white patchwork before him, and give utterance once more to his thoughts regarding the puzzledom which would exist the next morning when the boys took their places.
“A magnificent mental exercise,” he said proudly, before marching slowly down the big room like a mathematical general surveying the field where he was to do battle next day with the enemy in the shape of sloth and ignorance.
So wrapped up was he in self that he passed out without noticing that he was watched by one who waited till he was out of sight, and then, though the door was open, preferred to enter by the window, leap on to a desk, and then slowly proceed from one to the other; not in a bold open way, but in a slinking, snaky, crawling fashion, as if about to spring upon some object of prey.
The peculiarity of this was that it necessitated great extension of person; and as, after the fashion of all cats save those that belong to the Isle of Man, Tom carried his tail behind him, he went on in ignorance of the fact that more than once the furry end touched lightly in a more than usually well-filled ink-well, the result being an inky trail, which, however, dried rapidly in the warm theatre, and was not likely to excite notice upon unpainted desk-lids which were dotted with the blots and smudges made by hundreds of boys.
But sometimes great discoveries come from very small things, and Wrench’s Tom played his part in one of the little comedies of life, those of Terence and Plautus not being intended here.
Chapter Twenty Nine.Something Unpleasant.The examination-days were not looked forward to with joy by Dr Bewley’s pupils; and, sad to say, Morris’s days were liked least. In fact, his was the only joyous countenance upon the morning after he had prepared the theatre, when he glanced round at the heavy expressions that pervaded the breakfast-tables. But possibly the most severe face in the room that morning was the Doctor’s, as he paid his customary visit, and he took it with him afterwards into the theatre, which he entered punctually at ten o’clock, when the boys were all assembled in their places, while the masters were all at their desks, ready under Morris’s leadership to sit out the examination, using their eyes, and making perfectly certain that no pupil whispered a question, furtively passed a piece of paper to another, or dipped down into his desk in search of a so-called helping “crib.”To use the schoolboy phrase popular at Plymborough—“What was up?”The Doctor rose deliberately upon his throne-like place at the end of the theatre, coughed sonorously, settled his plump chin in his very stiff white cravat, and then gazed frowningly through his spectacles at the assembled pupils.There was silence for quite a couple of minutes, and every boy present felt that the Doctor was singling him out and was about to speak to him about the committal of some fault, while internally he asked himself what it could be.At last the great brain-ruler put an end to the suspense by addressing his pupils collectively; and every individual but one drew a breath of relief.“Young gentlemen,” he said, “in my long career of tuition of the boys who have been entrusted to my charge it has been my great desire to inculcate honour.”The three masters glanced at each other, making suggestive grimaces as if questioning what was to come, and at the same time expressing ignorance.“Now, I regret very much to have to tell you that this morning I have been made aware of a most dishonourable act committed by one of my pupils. I have received by post what I can only term a very degrading letter, which I am sorry to say I fully believe to have been written by some one present. Who that is I do not know, and I tell you all that I would rather not know until the culprit allows his better feelings to obtain the mastery, and comes to me privately and says, ‘Dr Bewley, I was guilty of that act of folly; but now I bitterly repent, and am here humbly to ask your forgiveness and at the same time that of my fellow-pupil whom I have maligned.’ Now, young gentlemen, it gives me pain to address you all for one boy’s sin, and I have only this to say, that you whose consciences are clear can let it pass away like a cloud; to him who has this black speck upon his conscience I only say I am waiting; come to me when the examination is done.—Mr Morris, it is ten minutes past ten. At one o’clock your examination is over, and the studies are at an end for the day.—Now, my dear boys, I wish you all success, and I trust that you will show Mr Morris that his mathematical efforts on your behalf have not been in vain.”There was an end to the painful silence half a minute later, as the Doctor closed the door after him, not loudly, but it seemed to echo among the great beams of the building, while it was long before his slow, heavy step died away upon the gravel path outside.“Now, young gentlemen,” said Morris sharply, “our Principal’s address is not to interfere with my examination. You have your papers. Pro—”There was a pause.”—Ceed!” shouted Mr Morris.There was the scratching of pens upon papers, but upon very few; most of the boys taking their pens and putting them down again, to rest their elbows on the desks and their chins upon their thumbs, as they fixed their eyes upon the column-like pile of questions printed quite close to the left side of the sheets of foolscap, while the three masters at the two ends and in the middle of the theatre seated themselves, book in hand, ready to hold up high before their faces so that they could conveniently peer over the top and make certain that there were not any more culprits than one within reach of their piercing eyes.Mr Morris, to pass his three hours gently and pleasantly, opened a very old copy, by Blankborough, upon logarithms; Monsieur Brohanne had armed himself with a heavy tome ofLa Grande Encyclopédie, with a bookmark therein at the page dealing with the ancientlangue d’oc; while Mr Rampson, also linguistical, opened a sickly-looking vellum volume, horribly mildewy and stained, and made as if to read a very brown page of Greek whose characters looked like so many tiny creases and shrinkings in a piece of dry skin.Only one boy spoke, and that was Glyn Severn, and he to himself; but at the same time he had caught Singh’s eye as he sat some distance from him, and, placing his sheet of foolscap by his side, he raised his blotting-pad so that his companion could see a great blotch of ink thereon which seemed as if it had been roughly made by a brush that had been dipped in ink.This done, he laid the pad back in its place, twisted the fold towards him, and taking a bright, new two-bladed knife that had been purchased with the proceeds of the Colonel’s cheque, he opened the large blade and carefully passed it along the fold, setting free one half-sheet of the absorbent paper. This he folded and put in his pocket; but the ink had gone through to the next half-sheet, and this he also separated, treating it as he did the first. This left two half-sheets, with the possibility of their slipping about and away from the rest. So, after pocketing his knife, he opened the remainder where they were folded, and refolded the pad inside out, so as to leave the two cut half-sheets in the middle.“That nasty nuisance of a cat!” he muttered to himself. “It must have come along smelling after poor little Burton’s white mice, and smudged my paper like this. Ah,” he continued, to himself, “I have promised the poor little chap that I’ll lick Master Slegge, and— Hullo! What’s this? What does old Morris mean by giving me half-used paper, and the other fellows new?”His hands had been busy redoubling and smoothing the fold over the now prisoned half-sheets, and he was about to hold up his hand as a sign to the nearest master that he wanted to speak; but he let it fall again upon the desk, and sat gazing down at some indistinctly seen lines upon the blotting-paper, which looked as if a letter had been inserted wet within the pad and hastily blotted.He could barely read a word, but somehow his curiosity was aroused, and he turned the leaf over, to find that the newly written letter had been placed in contact with the other side, the lines looking far blacker there, but seen like a page of printing type the reverse way on, so that he could not read a word.Glyn closed the leaf again and tried to read once more, but with very little success; but for some reason or another his interest was more deeply excited, and he doubled two more leaves over so as to hide the writing, drew forward the foolscap paper to place it once more on the blotting-pad, and then began to read hard at the first section, trying the while to forget all about the freshly blotted letter, but in vain.For two questions very different from Mr Morris’s kept on appealing to him, neither of them algebraic or dealing with Euclid. One was, “How came that letter to be blotted on my pad?” and, “Who was it that wrote it?”There was no answer; but the boy felt that he knew enough about one of Mr Morris’s questions to begin to write the answer, and over this he had been busy for about ten minutes when another question flashed across his brain: “Was this the letter of which the Doctor spoke?”
The examination-days were not looked forward to with joy by Dr Bewley’s pupils; and, sad to say, Morris’s days were liked least. In fact, his was the only joyous countenance upon the morning after he had prepared the theatre, when he glanced round at the heavy expressions that pervaded the breakfast-tables. But possibly the most severe face in the room that morning was the Doctor’s, as he paid his customary visit, and he took it with him afterwards into the theatre, which he entered punctually at ten o’clock, when the boys were all assembled in their places, while the masters were all at their desks, ready under Morris’s leadership to sit out the examination, using their eyes, and making perfectly certain that no pupil whispered a question, furtively passed a piece of paper to another, or dipped down into his desk in search of a so-called helping “crib.”
To use the schoolboy phrase popular at Plymborough—“What was up?”
The Doctor rose deliberately upon his throne-like place at the end of the theatre, coughed sonorously, settled his plump chin in his very stiff white cravat, and then gazed frowningly through his spectacles at the assembled pupils.
There was silence for quite a couple of minutes, and every boy present felt that the Doctor was singling him out and was about to speak to him about the committal of some fault, while internally he asked himself what it could be.
At last the great brain-ruler put an end to the suspense by addressing his pupils collectively; and every individual but one drew a breath of relief.
“Young gentlemen,” he said, “in my long career of tuition of the boys who have been entrusted to my charge it has been my great desire to inculcate honour.”
The three masters glanced at each other, making suggestive grimaces as if questioning what was to come, and at the same time expressing ignorance.
“Now, I regret very much to have to tell you that this morning I have been made aware of a most dishonourable act committed by one of my pupils. I have received by post what I can only term a very degrading letter, which I am sorry to say I fully believe to have been written by some one present. Who that is I do not know, and I tell you all that I would rather not know until the culprit allows his better feelings to obtain the mastery, and comes to me privately and says, ‘Dr Bewley, I was guilty of that act of folly; but now I bitterly repent, and am here humbly to ask your forgiveness and at the same time that of my fellow-pupil whom I have maligned.’ Now, young gentlemen, it gives me pain to address you all for one boy’s sin, and I have only this to say, that you whose consciences are clear can let it pass away like a cloud; to him who has this black speck upon his conscience I only say I am waiting; come to me when the examination is done.—Mr Morris, it is ten minutes past ten. At one o’clock your examination is over, and the studies are at an end for the day.—Now, my dear boys, I wish you all success, and I trust that you will show Mr Morris that his mathematical efforts on your behalf have not been in vain.”
There was an end to the painful silence half a minute later, as the Doctor closed the door after him, not loudly, but it seemed to echo among the great beams of the building, while it was long before his slow, heavy step died away upon the gravel path outside.
“Now, young gentlemen,” said Morris sharply, “our Principal’s address is not to interfere with my examination. You have your papers. Pro—”
There was a pause.
”—Ceed!” shouted Mr Morris.
There was the scratching of pens upon papers, but upon very few; most of the boys taking their pens and putting them down again, to rest their elbows on the desks and their chins upon their thumbs, as they fixed their eyes upon the column-like pile of questions printed quite close to the left side of the sheets of foolscap, while the three masters at the two ends and in the middle of the theatre seated themselves, book in hand, ready to hold up high before their faces so that they could conveniently peer over the top and make certain that there were not any more culprits than one within reach of their piercing eyes.
Mr Morris, to pass his three hours gently and pleasantly, opened a very old copy, by Blankborough, upon logarithms; Monsieur Brohanne had armed himself with a heavy tome ofLa Grande Encyclopédie, with a bookmark therein at the page dealing with the ancientlangue d’oc; while Mr Rampson, also linguistical, opened a sickly-looking vellum volume, horribly mildewy and stained, and made as if to read a very brown page of Greek whose characters looked like so many tiny creases and shrinkings in a piece of dry skin.
Only one boy spoke, and that was Glyn Severn, and he to himself; but at the same time he had caught Singh’s eye as he sat some distance from him, and, placing his sheet of foolscap by his side, he raised his blotting-pad so that his companion could see a great blotch of ink thereon which seemed as if it had been roughly made by a brush that had been dipped in ink.
This done, he laid the pad back in its place, twisted the fold towards him, and taking a bright, new two-bladed knife that had been purchased with the proceeds of the Colonel’s cheque, he opened the large blade and carefully passed it along the fold, setting free one half-sheet of the absorbent paper. This he folded and put in his pocket; but the ink had gone through to the next half-sheet, and this he also separated, treating it as he did the first. This left two half-sheets, with the possibility of their slipping about and away from the rest. So, after pocketing his knife, he opened the remainder where they were folded, and refolded the pad inside out, so as to leave the two cut half-sheets in the middle.
“That nasty nuisance of a cat!” he muttered to himself. “It must have come along smelling after poor little Burton’s white mice, and smudged my paper like this. Ah,” he continued, to himself, “I have promised the poor little chap that I’ll lick Master Slegge, and— Hullo! What’s this? What does old Morris mean by giving me half-used paper, and the other fellows new?”
His hands had been busy redoubling and smoothing the fold over the now prisoned half-sheets, and he was about to hold up his hand as a sign to the nearest master that he wanted to speak; but he let it fall again upon the desk, and sat gazing down at some indistinctly seen lines upon the blotting-paper, which looked as if a letter had been inserted wet within the pad and hastily blotted.
He could barely read a word, but somehow his curiosity was aroused, and he turned the leaf over, to find that the newly written letter had been placed in contact with the other side, the lines looking far blacker there, but seen like a page of printing type the reverse way on, so that he could not read a word.
Glyn closed the leaf again and tried to read once more, but with very little success; but for some reason or another his interest was more deeply excited, and he doubled two more leaves over so as to hide the writing, drew forward the foolscap paper to place it once more on the blotting-pad, and then began to read hard at the first section, trying the while to forget all about the freshly blotted letter, but in vain.
For two questions very different from Mr Morris’s kept on appealing to him, neither of them algebraic or dealing with Euclid. One was, “How came that letter to be blotted on my pad?” and, “Who was it that wrote it?”
There was no answer; but the boy felt that he knew enough about one of Mr Morris’s questions to begin to write the answer, and over this he had been busy for about ten minutes when another question flashed across his brain: “Was this the letter of which the Doctor spoke?”
Chapter Thirty.Brought to Book.Not until late that same evening did Glyn have an opportunity of investigating the mystery, for he had purposely refrained from making a confidant of Singh; so that it was after the latter was asleep that Glyn, rising softly, went over to the dressing-table and there lighted the chamber candle, which stood at the side of the looking-glass.“Will it be too blurred?” he thought, and he held up in front of the mirror a piece of blotting-paper, and then started, for the occupant of the other bed stirred slightly, causing Glyn to step cautiously to the side of the sleeper.“He won’t wake,” muttered Glyn, and he went back to the table and recommenced his task, to find that with the aid of reflection the written words on the spongy surface of the blotting-paper stood out fairly plain, though there was a break here and there. And this is what he read:“it was g— —ern oo thev the princes—”Then there was a blurred line where the ink had run, with only a letter or two distinct at intervals. Then half a blank line, and then, very much blurred and obscure, more resembling a row of blots than so much writing:“e as idden—sum whare—for sertane.”Another line all blotted and indistinct; then:“umble Suvvent,—Wun oo nose.”Then a line in which so obscure and run were the letters that minutes had elapsed before the reader could make out what they meant:“toe the doktor.”Glyn drew back from the glass as if stung, and then the question which came to him was who had written this abominable, ill-spelt accusation, evidently pointed at himself?“That was the letter, then, that the Doctor mentioned,” he said to himself, and he tried to read the words again, instinctively filling up some of the blanks so as to make the letter fit himself; and it seemed to him that there could only have been one person who was capable of writing such a thing.He examined the lettering once again—a back-slanting hand, disguised.“And I have only one enemy—Slegge,” he thought to himself, as he softly blew out the candle and crept back into bed; but it was long ere sleep came, for the writing, run by the blotting-paper but still vivid, seemed to dance before his eyes, and as he now mentally read it: “It was Glyn Severn who stole the Prince’s belt.”And it was with this to form the subject of his dreams that he fell fast asleep.On the following morning Glyn entered the class-room early and proceeded to Slegge’s desk.“Just as I thought,” he said, and he took up one of the writing folio books which lay with other volumes on the desk-cover.There was no one else in the theatre at that early hour, and Glyn had time to compare as he wished certain of the letters and capitals in Slegge’s handwriting with the wording on the blotting-paper.“It was he; there can be no doubt,” he exclaimed, and he went out of the room, making for the playground, intending to find his detractor; but he was not to be seen.Fortune, however, favoured him as he was making his way back to the schoolhouse, for near the boys’ gardens he suddenly caught sight of the object of his search.“I say, Slegge,” he said, approaching the lad, “I want to talk to you.”It did not seem to be quite the same self-confident bully of the day previous who responded, “Eh? You do, Severn? What’s up?”“Come into the class-room,” said Severn. “I want you.”“What!” began Slegge. “What do you mean? Why are you trying to order me about?”“Because I have something to tell you.”“Ha, ha, Cocky Severn! It’s time you had that thrashing.”“Is it?” said Glyn. “Well, I don’t think I should care to fight with a fellow who writes anonymous letters.”“What do you mean by that?” cried the other.“I will show you what I mean if you come with me. I don’t suppose you want the other fellows to hear it.”“I don’t care,” said Slegge. “Some cock-and-bull story you are hatching, Severn.”“You wrote that letter,” said Glyn abruptly, and his voice sounded husky with the emotion and rage that were gathering in his breast.“Letter? Letter? What do you mean? Has one come for me by the post?”“You know what letter I mean,” burst out Severn.“Here, I say,” cried Slegge, with a most perfect assumption of innocence; and he looked round as if speaking to a whole gathering of their schoolfellows, “what’s he talking about? I don’t know. Isn’t going off his head, is he?”“That letter the Doctor was talking about yesterday morning,” cried Glyn, with the passion within beginning to master him.“Here, I don’t know what you mean,” cried Slegge. “You seem to have got out of bed upside down, or else you haven’t woke up yet. What do you mean by your letters?”“You miserable shuffler!” cried Glyn, in a voice almost inaudible from rage. “The Doctor only talked about a letter; but I’ve found you out.”“No, you haven’t,” cried Slegge truculently; “you have found me in—in here by the gardens, and if you have come down here to have it out once more before breakfast, come along down to the elms. I am your man.”“That’s just what I should like to do,” panted Severn, whose hands kept opening and shutting as they hung by his sides; and there was something in the boy’s looks that made Slegge change colour slightly, and he glanced quickly to right and left as if in search of the support of his fellows; but there was no one within sight.“But,” continued Glyn, “if you think I am going to lower myself by fighting a dirty, cowardly hound who has struck at me behind the back like the dishonourable cur that the Doctor said he was waiting to see come and confess what he had done, you are mistaken.”“There, I knew it!” cried Slegge. “You are afraid. Put up your hands, or I will give you the coward’s blow.”To the bully’s utter astonishment, one of Glyn’s hands only rose quick as lightning and had him by the throat.“You dare!” he cried. “Strike me if you dare! Yes, it would be a coward’s blow. But if you do I won’t answer for what will happen, for I shall forget what you have done, and—and—”“Here, Severn! Severn! What’s the matter with you?” gasped Slegge excitedly. “I haven’t done anything. Are you going mad?”“You have, you blackguard!” cried Glyn, forcing the fellow back till he had him up against the garden-fence. “You have always hated me ever since I licked you, and like the coward you are you stooped to write that dirty, ill-spelt, abominable letter to make the Doctor think I had stolen Singh’s belt.”“Oh, I don’t know what you mean,” whined Slegge. “Let go, will you?”“No!” cried Glyn, raising his other hand to catch Slegge by the wrist. “Not till I’ve made you do what the Doctor asked for—taken you to his room and made you confess.”“Confess? I haven’t got anything to confess. You are mad, and I don’t know what you mean,” cried Slegge, whose face was now white. “Let go, or I’ll call for help.”“Do,” cried Glyn, “and I’ll expose you before everybody. You coward! Why, a baby could have seen through your miserable sham, ill-spelt letter, with the words all slanting the wrong way.”“I don’t know what letter you mean. Has the Doctor been showing you the letter he was talking about?”“No,” said Glyn mockingly, as he read in the troubled face before him that he was quite right. “But I have read it all the same, on the piece of blotting-paper that you used to dry what you had written—the sheet of blotting-paper that was put ready on my desk so that if it were found it might seem that I was the writer.”“That I wrote?” said Slegge, with a forced laugh. “That you wrote, you mean, before you sent it. I don’t know what for, unless you wanted people to think that it was done by some one who didn’t like you. What do you mean by accusing me?”“Because you are not so clever as you thought. Come on here to the class-room. I have been there this morning, and laid the blotting-paper by the side of one of your exercises on your desk; and, clever as you thought yourself, the Doctor will see at a glance that some of the letters, in spite of the way you wrote them, could only have been written by you.” And here he took a piece of paper out—a piece that he had torn from Slegge’s exercise-book—and laid beside it the unfolded blotting-paper.Slegge made a dash at them, but Glyn was too quick. Throwing one hand behind his back, he pressed Slegge with the other fiercely against the fence.“There!” he cried triumphantly. “That’s like confessing it. Come on to the Doctor. There’s Mr Morris yonder.—Mr—”“No, no, don’t! Pray don’t call!”“Hah!” cried Glyn triumphantly. “Then you did write it?”“I—I—”“Speak! You did write it, you coward! Now confess!”“Well, I—I was in a passion, and I only thought it would be a lark.”“You were in a passion, and you thought it would be a lark!” cried Glyn scornfully. “You muddle-headed idiot, you did it to injure me, for you must have had some idea in your stupid thick brain that it would do me harm. But come on. You have confessed it, and you shan’t go alone to the Doctor to say that you repent and that you are sorry for it all, for you shall come with me. Quick! Now, at once, before the breakfast-bell rings; and we will see what the Doctor says. Perhaps he will understand it better than I do, for I hardly know what you meant.”“No, no, don’t! Pray don’t, Severn! Haven’t I owned up? What more do you want?” And the big lad spoke with his lips quivering and a curious twitching appearing about the corners of his mouth; but Glyn seemed as hard as iron.“What more do I want? I want the Doctor to know what a miserable coward and bully he has in the school.”“No, no,” gasped Slegge, in a low, husky voice, and with his face now all of a quiver. “I can’t—I won’t! I tell you I can’t come!”“And I tell you you shall come,” cried Glyn, dragging him along a step or two.“Don’t, I tell you! You will have Morris see,” gasped Slegge.“I want him to see, and all the fellows to see what a coward we have got amongst us. So come along.”Slegge caught him by the lapel of his jacket, and with his voice changing into a piteous whisper, “Pray, pray don’t, Severn!” he panted. “Do you know what it means?”“I know what it ought to mean,” cried Glyn mockingly; “a good flogging; but the Doctor won’t give you that.”“No,” whispered the lad piteously. “I’d bear that; but he’d send me back home in disgrace. There was a fellow here once, and the Doctor called it expelled. Severn, old chap, I am going to leave at the end of this half. It will be like ruin to me, for everything will be known. There, I confess. I was a fool, and what you called me.”“Then come like a man and say that to the Doctor.”“I can’t! I can’t! I—oh, Severn! Severn!”The poor wretch could get out no more articulately, but sank down upon his knees, fighting hard for a few moments to master himself, but only to burst forth into a fit of hysterical sobbing.The pitiful, appealing face turned up to him mastered Glyn on the instant, and he loosened his hold, to glance round directly in the direction of Morris, and then back.“Get up,” he said, “and don’t do that. Come along here.”“No, no; I can’t go before the Doctor. Severn, you always were a good fellow—a better chap than I am. Pray, pray, forgive me this once!”“And you will never do so any more?” cried Glyn half-mockingly.“Never! never! I swear I won’t!”“Well,” said Glyn, whose rage seemed to have entirely evaporated, “I suppose that it would pretty well ruin you, at all events for this school. I don’t want to be hard on you; but I can’t help half-hating you, Slegge, for the way you have behaved to that poor little beggar Burton. Look here, Slegge, if you say honestly that you beg pardon—”“Yes,” cried the lad. “I do beg your pardon, Severn!”“No; I don’t want you to beg my pardon,” cried Glyn. “I can take care of myself. I want you to tell that poor little chap that you are sorry you ill-used him, and promise that you will never behave badly to him again.”“Yes, yes. I will, I will. But you are going to tell the Doctor?”“No, I shall not. I am not a sneak,” said Glyn, “nor a coward neither. I have shown you that, and I am not going to jump on a fellow when he’s down. But come along here.”“To the Doctor’s? Oh no, no!”“Be quiet, I tell you, and wipe your eyes and blow your nose. You don’t want everybody to see?”“No, no.—Thank you!—No,” cried the big fellow hurriedly. “I couldn’t help it. I am not well. I must go to my room and have a wash before the breakfast-bell rings. May I go now?”“No; you will be all right. The fellows won’t see. I only want you to come over here to where Burton is. No, there he goes! I’ll call him here. There, don’t show that we have been quarrelling.—Hi! Burton!” cried Glyn, stepping to the garden-hedge and shouting loudly, with the effect that as soon as the little fellow realised who called he came bounding towards him, but every now and then with a slight limp.“Just a quiet word or two that you are sorry you hurt him; and I want you to show it afterwards—not in words.”“You want me, Severn?” cried the little fellow, looking from one to the other wonderingly as soon as he realised that his friend was not alone.“Yes. Slegge and I have been talking about you. He wants to say a word or two to you about hurting you the other day.”The little fellow glanced more wonderingly than ever at his big enemy.“Does he?” he said dubiously, and he turned his eyes from one to the other again.“Oh yes,” said Slegge, with rather a pitiful attempt to speak in a jocular tone, which he could not continue to the end. “I am precious sorry I kicked you so hard. But you’ll forgive me and shake hands—won’t you, Burton?”“Ye–es, if you really are sorry,” said the little fellow, slowly raising his hand, which was snatched at and forcibly wrung, just as the breakfast-bell rang out, and Slegge turned and dashed off towards the schoolhouse as hard as he could run.“I say, Severn,” said little Burton, turning his eyes wonderingly up at his companion, who had playfully caught him by the ear and begun leading him towards where the bell was clanging out loudly as Sam Grigg tugged at the rope, “do you think Slegge means that?”“Oh yes. I have been talking to him about it, and I am sure he’s very sorry now.”“Oh, I say, Severn,” cried the little fellow joyously, and with his eyes full of the admiration he felt, “what a chap you are!”Some one who sat near took an observation that morning over the breakfast that Slegge did not seem to enjoy his bread and butter, and set it down to the butter being too salt; and though the Doctor waited for days in the anticipation that the sender of the anonymous letter would come to him to confess, he expressed himself to the masters as disappointed, for the culprit did not come, and the affair died out in the greater interest that was taken later on in the matter of the belt.Still, somebody did go to see the Doctor, and he looked at him wonderingly, for it was not the boy he expected to see, but the very last whom he would have ventured to suspect.
Not until late that same evening did Glyn have an opportunity of investigating the mystery, for he had purposely refrained from making a confidant of Singh; so that it was after the latter was asleep that Glyn, rising softly, went over to the dressing-table and there lighted the chamber candle, which stood at the side of the looking-glass.
“Will it be too blurred?” he thought, and he held up in front of the mirror a piece of blotting-paper, and then started, for the occupant of the other bed stirred slightly, causing Glyn to step cautiously to the side of the sleeper.
“He won’t wake,” muttered Glyn, and he went back to the table and recommenced his task, to find that with the aid of reflection the written words on the spongy surface of the blotting-paper stood out fairly plain, though there was a break here and there. And this is what he read:
“it was g— —ern oo thev the princes—”
Then there was a blurred line where the ink had run, with only a letter or two distinct at intervals. Then half a blank line, and then, very much blurred and obscure, more resembling a row of blots than so much writing:
“e as idden—sum whare—for sertane.”
Another line all blotted and indistinct; then:
“umble Suvvent,—Wun oo nose.”
Then a line in which so obscure and run were the letters that minutes had elapsed before the reader could make out what they meant:
“toe the doktor.”
Glyn drew back from the glass as if stung, and then the question which came to him was who had written this abominable, ill-spelt accusation, evidently pointed at himself?
“That was the letter, then, that the Doctor mentioned,” he said to himself, and he tried to read the words again, instinctively filling up some of the blanks so as to make the letter fit himself; and it seemed to him that there could only have been one person who was capable of writing such a thing.
He examined the lettering once again—a back-slanting hand, disguised.
“And I have only one enemy—Slegge,” he thought to himself, as he softly blew out the candle and crept back into bed; but it was long ere sleep came, for the writing, run by the blotting-paper but still vivid, seemed to dance before his eyes, and as he now mentally read it: “It was Glyn Severn who stole the Prince’s belt.”
And it was with this to form the subject of his dreams that he fell fast asleep.
On the following morning Glyn entered the class-room early and proceeded to Slegge’s desk.
“Just as I thought,” he said, and he took up one of the writing folio books which lay with other volumes on the desk-cover.
There was no one else in the theatre at that early hour, and Glyn had time to compare as he wished certain of the letters and capitals in Slegge’s handwriting with the wording on the blotting-paper.
“It was he; there can be no doubt,” he exclaimed, and he went out of the room, making for the playground, intending to find his detractor; but he was not to be seen.
Fortune, however, favoured him as he was making his way back to the schoolhouse, for near the boys’ gardens he suddenly caught sight of the object of his search.
“I say, Slegge,” he said, approaching the lad, “I want to talk to you.”
It did not seem to be quite the same self-confident bully of the day previous who responded, “Eh? You do, Severn? What’s up?”
“Come into the class-room,” said Severn. “I want you.”
“What!” began Slegge. “What do you mean? Why are you trying to order me about?”
“Because I have something to tell you.”
“Ha, ha, Cocky Severn! It’s time you had that thrashing.”
“Is it?” said Glyn. “Well, I don’t think I should care to fight with a fellow who writes anonymous letters.”
“What do you mean by that?” cried the other.
“I will show you what I mean if you come with me. I don’t suppose you want the other fellows to hear it.”
“I don’t care,” said Slegge. “Some cock-and-bull story you are hatching, Severn.”
“You wrote that letter,” said Glyn abruptly, and his voice sounded husky with the emotion and rage that were gathering in his breast.
“Letter? Letter? What do you mean? Has one come for me by the post?”
“You know what letter I mean,” burst out Severn.
“Here, I say,” cried Slegge, with a most perfect assumption of innocence; and he looked round as if speaking to a whole gathering of their schoolfellows, “what’s he talking about? I don’t know. Isn’t going off his head, is he?”
“That letter the Doctor was talking about yesterday morning,” cried Glyn, with the passion within beginning to master him.
“Here, I don’t know what you mean,” cried Slegge. “You seem to have got out of bed upside down, or else you haven’t woke up yet. What do you mean by your letters?”
“You miserable shuffler!” cried Glyn, in a voice almost inaudible from rage. “The Doctor only talked about a letter; but I’ve found you out.”
“No, you haven’t,” cried Slegge truculently; “you have found me in—in here by the gardens, and if you have come down here to have it out once more before breakfast, come along down to the elms. I am your man.”
“That’s just what I should like to do,” panted Severn, whose hands kept opening and shutting as they hung by his sides; and there was something in the boy’s looks that made Slegge change colour slightly, and he glanced quickly to right and left as if in search of the support of his fellows; but there was no one within sight.
“But,” continued Glyn, “if you think I am going to lower myself by fighting a dirty, cowardly hound who has struck at me behind the back like the dishonourable cur that the Doctor said he was waiting to see come and confess what he had done, you are mistaken.”
“There, I knew it!” cried Slegge. “You are afraid. Put up your hands, or I will give you the coward’s blow.”
To the bully’s utter astonishment, one of Glyn’s hands only rose quick as lightning and had him by the throat.
“You dare!” he cried. “Strike me if you dare! Yes, it would be a coward’s blow. But if you do I won’t answer for what will happen, for I shall forget what you have done, and—and—”
“Here, Severn! Severn! What’s the matter with you?” gasped Slegge excitedly. “I haven’t done anything. Are you going mad?”
“You have, you blackguard!” cried Glyn, forcing the fellow back till he had him up against the garden-fence. “You have always hated me ever since I licked you, and like the coward you are you stooped to write that dirty, ill-spelt, abominable letter to make the Doctor think I had stolen Singh’s belt.”
“Oh, I don’t know what you mean,” whined Slegge. “Let go, will you?”
“No!” cried Glyn, raising his other hand to catch Slegge by the wrist. “Not till I’ve made you do what the Doctor asked for—taken you to his room and made you confess.”
“Confess? I haven’t got anything to confess. You are mad, and I don’t know what you mean,” cried Slegge, whose face was now white. “Let go, or I’ll call for help.”
“Do,” cried Glyn, “and I’ll expose you before everybody. You coward! Why, a baby could have seen through your miserable sham, ill-spelt letter, with the words all slanting the wrong way.”
“I don’t know what letter you mean. Has the Doctor been showing you the letter he was talking about?”
“No,” said Glyn mockingly, as he read in the troubled face before him that he was quite right. “But I have read it all the same, on the piece of blotting-paper that you used to dry what you had written—the sheet of blotting-paper that was put ready on my desk so that if it were found it might seem that I was the writer.”
“That I wrote?” said Slegge, with a forced laugh. “That you wrote, you mean, before you sent it. I don’t know what for, unless you wanted people to think that it was done by some one who didn’t like you. What do you mean by accusing me?”
“Because you are not so clever as you thought. Come on here to the class-room. I have been there this morning, and laid the blotting-paper by the side of one of your exercises on your desk; and, clever as you thought yourself, the Doctor will see at a glance that some of the letters, in spite of the way you wrote them, could only have been written by you.” And here he took a piece of paper out—a piece that he had torn from Slegge’s exercise-book—and laid beside it the unfolded blotting-paper.
Slegge made a dash at them, but Glyn was too quick. Throwing one hand behind his back, he pressed Slegge with the other fiercely against the fence.
“There!” he cried triumphantly. “That’s like confessing it. Come on to the Doctor. There’s Mr Morris yonder.—Mr—”
“No, no, don’t! Pray don’t call!”
“Hah!” cried Glyn triumphantly. “Then you did write it?”
“I—I—”
“Speak! You did write it, you coward! Now confess!”
“Well, I—I was in a passion, and I only thought it would be a lark.”
“You were in a passion, and you thought it would be a lark!” cried Glyn scornfully. “You muddle-headed idiot, you did it to injure me, for you must have had some idea in your stupid thick brain that it would do me harm. But come on. You have confessed it, and you shan’t go alone to the Doctor to say that you repent and that you are sorry for it all, for you shall come with me. Quick! Now, at once, before the breakfast-bell rings; and we will see what the Doctor says. Perhaps he will understand it better than I do, for I hardly know what you meant.”
“No, no, don’t! Pray don’t, Severn! Haven’t I owned up? What more do you want?” And the big lad spoke with his lips quivering and a curious twitching appearing about the corners of his mouth; but Glyn seemed as hard as iron.
“What more do I want? I want the Doctor to know what a miserable coward and bully he has in the school.”
“No, no,” gasped Slegge, in a low, husky voice, and with his face now all of a quiver. “I can’t—I won’t! I tell you I can’t come!”
“And I tell you you shall come,” cried Glyn, dragging him along a step or two.
“Don’t, I tell you! You will have Morris see,” gasped Slegge.
“I want him to see, and all the fellows to see what a coward we have got amongst us. So come along.”
Slegge caught him by the lapel of his jacket, and with his voice changing into a piteous whisper, “Pray, pray don’t, Severn!” he panted. “Do you know what it means?”
“I know what it ought to mean,” cried Glyn mockingly; “a good flogging; but the Doctor won’t give you that.”
“No,” whispered the lad piteously. “I’d bear that; but he’d send me back home in disgrace. There was a fellow here once, and the Doctor called it expelled. Severn, old chap, I am going to leave at the end of this half. It will be like ruin to me, for everything will be known. There, I confess. I was a fool, and what you called me.”
“Then come like a man and say that to the Doctor.”
“I can’t! I can’t! I—oh, Severn! Severn!”
The poor wretch could get out no more articulately, but sank down upon his knees, fighting hard for a few moments to master himself, but only to burst forth into a fit of hysterical sobbing.
The pitiful, appealing face turned up to him mastered Glyn on the instant, and he loosened his hold, to glance round directly in the direction of Morris, and then back.
“Get up,” he said, “and don’t do that. Come along here.”
“No, no; I can’t go before the Doctor. Severn, you always were a good fellow—a better chap than I am. Pray, pray, forgive me this once!”
“And you will never do so any more?” cried Glyn half-mockingly.
“Never! never! I swear I won’t!”
“Well,” said Glyn, whose rage seemed to have entirely evaporated, “I suppose that it would pretty well ruin you, at all events for this school. I don’t want to be hard on you; but I can’t help half-hating you, Slegge, for the way you have behaved to that poor little beggar Burton. Look here, Slegge, if you say honestly that you beg pardon—”
“Yes,” cried the lad. “I do beg your pardon, Severn!”
“No; I don’t want you to beg my pardon,” cried Glyn. “I can take care of myself. I want you to tell that poor little chap that you are sorry you ill-used him, and promise that you will never behave badly to him again.”
“Yes, yes. I will, I will. But you are going to tell the Doctor?”
“No, I shall not. I am not a sneak,” said Glyn, “nor a coward neither. I have shown you that, and I am not going to jump on a fellow when he’s down. But come along here.”
“To the Doctor’s? Oh no, no!”
“Be quiet, I tell you, and wipe your eyes and blow your nose. You don’t want everybody to see?”
“No, no.—Thank you!—No,” cried the big fellow hurriedly. “I couldn’t help it. I am not well. I must go to my room and have a wash before the breakfast-bell rings. May I go now?”
“No; you will be all right. The fellows won’t see. I only want you to come over here to where Burton is. No, there he goes! I’ll call him here. There, don’t show that we have been quarrelling.—Hi! Burton!” cried Glyn, stepping to the garden-hedge and shouting loudly, with the effect that as soon as the little fellow realised who called he came bounding towards him, but every now and then with a slight limp.
“Just a quiet word or two that you are sorry you hurt him; and I want you to show it afterwards—not in words.”
“You want me, Severn?” cried the little fellow, looking from one to the other wonderingly as soon as he realised that his friend was not alone.
“Yes. Slegge and I have been talking about you. He wants to say a word or two to you about hurting you the other day.”
The little fellow glanced more wonderingly than ever at his big enemy.
“Does he?” he said dubiously, and he turned his eyes from one to the other again.
“Oh yes,” said Slegge, with rather a pitiful attempt to speak in a jocular tone, which he could not continue to the end. “I am precious sorry I kicked you so hard. But you’ll forgive me and shake hands—won’t you, Burton?”
“Ye–es, if you really are sorry,” said the little fellow, slowly raising his hand, which was snatched at and forcibly wrung, just as the breakfast-bell rang out, and Slegge turned and dashed off towards the schoolhouse as hard as he could run.
“I say, Severn,” said little Burton, turning his eyes wonderingly up at his companion, who had playfully caught him by the ear and begun leading him towards where the bell was clanging out loudly as Sam Grigg tugged at the rope, “do you think Slegge means that?”
“Oh yes. I have been talking to him about it, and I am sure he’s very sorry now.”
“Oh, I say, Severn,” cried the little fellow joyously, and with his eyes full of the admiration he felt, “what a chap you are!”
Some one who sat near took an observation that morning over the breakfast that Slegge did not seem to enjoy his bread and butter, and set it down to the butter being too salt; and though the Doctor waited for days in the anticipation that the sender of the anonymous letter would come to him to confess, he expressed himself to the masters as disappointed, for the culprit did not come, and the affair died out in the greater interest that was taken later on in the matter of the belt.
Still, somebody did go to see the Doctor, and he looked at him wonderingly, for it was not the boy he expected to see, but the very last whom he would have ventured to suspect.
Chapter Thirty One.Glyn’s worried Brain.“Is any one with the Doctor, Wrench?”“No, sir,” replied the man distantly, and he looked curiously at Glyn. “Aren’t you well this morning, sir?”“Yes—no. Don’t ask questions,” cried the boy petulantly.“All right, sir,” said the man. “I don’t want to ask no questions. There’s been too much of it lately. Suspicions and ugly looks, and the rest of it. I’d have given warning the other day, only if I had, the next thing would have been more suspicion and the police perhaps had in to ask me why I wanted to go. Shall I ask the Doctor, sir, if he will see you?”“No,” cried Glyn, and walking past the man he tapped at the study-door, and in response to the Doctor’s deep, “Come in,” entered.“What does this mean?” muttered Wrench. “I don’t like listening; but if I went there and put my ear to the keyhole I could catch every word; and so sure as I did somebody would come into the hall and find me at it. So I won’t go. But what does it mean? Young Severn’s found out all about it, as sure as I stand here. Then it’s one of the boys after all. Well, I don’t care about it as long as it ain’t me or Sam, so I’ll go on with my work.”Meanwhile Glyn had entered, closed the door after him, and stood gazing at the Doctor with a curious sensation in his breast that seemed to stop all power of speaking connectedly, as he had meant to do when he had obeyed the impulse to make a clean breast to his old preceptor.“Well, Severn,” said the Doctor gravely, as he laid down his pen, thrust up his glasses till they were stopped by the stiff grey hair, and allowed himself to sink back in his writing-chair, “you wish to speak to me?”“Yes, sir, please; I—” Glyn stopped short.That was all that would come, so the Doctor waited for a few moments to give him time to collect himself, and then with an encouraging smile: “Are you unwell, my boy? Do you wish to see our physician?”Glyn uttered a kind of gasp, and then, making a tremendous effort, the power to speak returned, and he cried, “Oh no, sir; I am quite well, only—only I am in great trouble, and I want to speak to you.”“Indeed!” said the Doctor gravely, as he placed his elbows upon the table, joined his finger-tips, and looked over them rather sadly at his visitor. “I am glad you have come, my boy,” he continued gently, “for I like my pupils to look up to me as if for the time being I stood in the place of their parents. Now then, speak out. What is it? Some fresh quarrel between you and Mr Slegge?”“No, sir,” cried Glyn. “It’s about that dreadful business of Singh’s belt.”“Ah!” said the Doctor, rather more sharply. “You know something about it?”“Yes, sir. It’s about that I have come. About people being wrongfully suspected, and all the unpleasantry.”“Indeed!” said the Doctor, and he now spoke rather coldly. “You know, Severn, where it is?”“I—I think so, sir. Yes, sir,” continued the boy, speaking more firmly, “and I want to tell you all I do know.”The Doctor fixed his eyes rather sternly now, for a strange suspicion was entering his mind, due to the boy’s agitated manner and his hesitating, half-reticent speech.“Well,” he said, “go on; and I beg, my boy, that you tell me everything without reservation, though I am sorry, deeply grieved, that you should have to come and speak to me like this.”Glyn seemed to breathe far more freely now, and as if the nervous oppression at his breast had passed away.“You see, sir,” he began, “I have known all along that Singh had that very valuable belt. It was his father’s, and the Maharajah used to wear it; and when he died my father took charge of it and all the Maharajah’s valuable jewels as well.”“Yes,” said the Doctor slowly. “He was the late Prince’s executor and Singh’s guardian.”“Yes, sir; and Singh was very eager to have it—oh, months and months before we came over here to school, and my father used to smile at him and tell him that he had far better not have it until he had grown older, and asked him why he who was such a boy yet should want such a rich ornament, and told him it was vanity. But Singh said it wasn’t that; it was because the people had been used to see his father wear it, and that now he was dead and he had become Maharajah they would think more of him and look up to him if he wore the belt himself. You see, sir, Singh told me it was like being crowned.”“I see,” said the Doctor gravely, and he kept his eyes fixed upon the young speaker. “Go on.”“Well, sir, father always put him off, and Singh didn’t like it, and asked for it again and again; but my father would never let him have it till we were coming slowly over here to England. We stopped for a month in Ceylon, and when we sailed again to come here, one day Singh asked father again to let him have it, so that he could wear the belt as soon as we reached England. And then father said he should have it if he would make a promise not to wear it unless he had to appear before the Queen. Then he was to put it away again, and not make a parade of himself in a country where the greatest people in the land were always dressed in the plainest way.”“Your father spoke wisely and well, my boy,” said the Doctor gravely. “Great men do not depend upon show, but upon the jewels of worth and wisdom with which they have adorned themselves in their careers. Well, I repeat I am very glad you have come. Go on.”“Yes, sir,” said Glyn, clearing his throat. “Singh promised father that he would do exactly as he was told, and the next day my father told me to try and keep Singh to his word. He said it would be very absurd now that we were going among strangers and a lot of boys of our own ages if Singh were tempted to make a show of the royal belt. ‘You be watchful,’ he said, ‘and help him when he seems weak, for he has naturally a good deal of Eastern vanity and pride in him.’”“Quite true,” said the Doctor softly; “but he has improved wonderfully since he has been here.”“Yes, sir; but every now and then he has bad fits, and has wanted to show off; but I was always able to stop him. Then, you see, sir—”Glyn broke down, and as he met the Doctor’s steady gaze he seemed to make effort after effort to proceed, but in vain.“I told you, my boy,” said the Doctor encouragingly, “to speak to me as if I were your father.”“Yes, sir, I know,” cried Glyn passionately, “and I want to speak out plainly and clearly, but it won’t come.”“Yes,” said the Doctor gravely; “it will, my boy. Go on to the end.”“Yes, sir,” cried Glyn. “Well, sir, there has been all this trouble about the belt when it was missed out of Singh’s box.”The Doctor bowed his head.“I seem to have been able to think of nothing else, and I couldn’t do my lessons—I could hardly eat my meals—and at night I couldn’t sleep for thinking about the belt and what my father would say about it being lost.”The Doctor bowed his head again very slowly and solemnly, and fixed his eyes once more upon Glyn’s flushed face.“You see, sir, my father said so much to me about Singh being as it were in my charge, and told me how he trusted in my example, and in me being ready to give Singh a sensible word whenever he was disposed to do anything not becoming to an English lad.”“Exactly, my boy,” said the Doctor. “Your father is a worthy trustee of this young ward, and it will be a terrible shock to him when he hears of this—er—er—accident and the loss.”“Yes, sir, for you see, as he is the old Maharajah’s executor, the royal belt was in his care till Singh is old enough to be his own master; and father will feel that he is to blame for giving way and letting Singh have it so soon.”“Exactly,” said the Doctor; “but, my boy, it seems to me that you are rather wandering away from your purpose, and are not telling me everything exactly as I should wish.”“It’s because, sir, it won’t come; something seems to stop me. But I am trying, sir.”“Well, I believe you, my boy,” said the Doctor. “Go on.”“Yes, sir. Well, I told you that I could hardly eat or sleep for thinking about it.”The Doctor sighed.“And it seemed so horrid, sir, that so many people should be suspected for what one person alone must have done.”“Yes,” said the Doctor, fixing him with his eyes again; and then as he met the boy’s frank, unblenching eyes his brow began to wear a curious look of perplexity, and he disjoined the tips of his fingers, picked up his quill-pen, and began slowly to litter the table-top by stripping off the plume.“Well, sir,” continued Glyn, speaking very hurriedly now, “I have always been dreaming about it, and waking up with starts, sir, fancying I heard some one creeping into the room to get to Singh’s box; and one night it was so real that I seemed to hear some one go to Singh’s bedside, take out the keys from his pocket, crawl to his box, unlock it, and lift the lid, and then shut it and lock it again. And I lay there, sir, with my hands and face wet with perspiration, wanting to call out to Singh; but I couldn’t stir. But when all was silent again I crept out of bed and went to his box to find the keys in it; and I opened it quickly and felt inside, feeling sure that it was one of the boys who had stolen the belt and who had repented and come and put it back again.”“And had he?” cried the Doctor, startled out of his grave calmness.“No, sir; I think it was only my fancy. But I have been something like that over and over again.”“Ah!” said the Doctor gravely once more. “The workings, my boy, of an uneasy mind.”“Yes, sir, and that’s what held me back from coming to you to speak out.”“Go on,” said the Doctor; “and speak plainly and to the point, my boy. What more have you to say?”“Only this, sir,” cried Glyn huskily, “that the night before last I lay awake for a long time, thinking and thinking about the belt and about Singh lying there sleeping so easily and not troubling himself in the least about the loss of the emeralds; and then all at once, when my head was so hot with the worry that I felt as if I must get out and drink some cold water.—I don’t know how it was, but I began going over the big cricket-match in the field, and it was as if it was the day before, and I was fidgeting and fidgeting about the crowd there’d be, and a lot of strangers walking about the grounds and perhaps finding their way into the empty dormitories; and it all worried me so, sir, that it made me think that somebody dishonest might go to Singh’s box and carry off the emeralds, and they would never be found again.”The Doctor leaned forward a little to gaze more fixedly in his pupil’s eyes. Then rising slowly, he reached over and placed his cool white hand upon Glyn’s forehead.“Yes, sir,” said the boy quickly, “it’s hot—it’s hot; but it comes like that sometimes. I believe it’s from thinking too much.”“Ah!” said the Doctor, subsiding again into his chair.“Well, sir, I was so worried about the belt that I thought I wouldn’t say anything to Singh, but that I would take his keys, get out the case, and bring it to you in the morning.”“Ah!” cried the Doctor excitedly now. “It would not have been right, my boy. But you did not do that.”“No, sir,” said the boy, with a bitter laugh; “for the next minute I thought you would put it in your table-drawer, and that it wouldn’t be safe there, for strangers might come into this room, so I—” Glyn stopped, and the Doctor waited patiently. “It seemed so weak and foolish, sir,” continued Glyn at last, after moistening his parched lips with his tongue, “but I must tell you. I seemed to be obliged to do it. I took out the case and went downstairs past all the boys’ rooms, and got out through the lecture-hall window to go across the playground to the cricket-shed where the boys’ lockers are, and there I opened our locker and took out a ball of kite-string.”“Yes,” said the Doctor. “Go on, go on.”“Then, sir, I came back across the playground and turned into the yard to go into the well-house, where I tied the end of the kite-string round the case very tightly and safely, and then leaned over and lifted one of the flaps of the well lid—”“And lowered the case down into the well?” cried the Doctor excitedly.“Yes, sir,” said Glyn; “and I could smell the cool, damp sides of the place, and hear a faint dripping of the water as I let the string run through my fingers, till at last the case splashed and it ran down more slowly, seeming to jerk a little to and fro as a flat thing does when it sinks, till I felt it touch the bottom. And then I leaned over to feel for a place where I could tie the string to one of the loose bricks at the side.”“But there are no loose bricks at the side, my boy,” said the Doctor.“No, sir,” said the boy. “I couldn’t feel one; and then all at once, as I was feeling about, the ball slipped out of my fingers and fell below with a splash.”“So that you could not pull the case up again?” cried the Doctor.“Yes, sir,” said Glyn very slowly, and looking at him in a peculiar manner.“And then,” said the Doctor, “what did you do?”“Nothing, sir,” replied Glyn, “for just then the first bell rang.”“What?” exclaimed the Doctor.“And I started up in bed, sir. It was all a dream.”“A dream!” cried the Doctor angrily. “Why, my good lad—”“But it was all so real, sir, and I was thinking about it all day yesterday, and that perhaps it’s possible that I really did do it walking in my sleep.”“Oh, impossible!” cried the Doctor.“I don’t know, sir,” said the boy; “but you see, I might have done so.”“Well—yes, you might,” said the Doctor slowly. “I did have a pupil once who was troubled with somnambulism. He used to walk into the next dormitory and scare the other boys.—Oh, but this is impossible!”“I thought you’d say so, sir.”“Yes,” said the Doctor, “impossible. Why, if it were true the belt must have been lying at the bottom of the well ever since the cricket-match weeks ago.”“Yes, sir, and I must have done it then in my sleep; and the night before last I dreamed again what I dreamed before.”“Tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut!” ejaculated the Doctor, rising now from his chair and beginning to walk to and fro excitedly. “Strange—most strange, and I feel sceptical in the extreme. It must all be imagination. An empty dream, brought about by the worry and anxiety of this unfortunate loss. Well, I am glad you have come, my boy, and—er—er—I must be frank with you. Your manner and the strangeness of your words half made me think that you had come, urged by your conscience, to make a confession of a very different kind.”Glyn started; his lips parted, and he looked wildly in the Doctor’s eyes.“Don’t look at me like that, my lad. Your manner suggested it, and I cannot tell you how relieved I feel.”As the Doctor spoke he leaned over his writing-table and caught the boy’s hand in his, to press it warmly.“But,” he said, as he subsided once more into his chair, “this must be a hallucination, an offspring of an overworked brain; and yet there are strange things in connection with the mental organisation, and I feel as if I ought to take some steps. What a relief it would be, my boy, to us all, the clearing away of a load of ungenerous suspicion. But one word: whom have you told of this?”“No one, sir,” said Glyn.“Not even Mr Singh?”“No, sir. I have been ever since yesterday thinking about what I ought to do, and I came to the conclusion at last that I ought to come to you, sir.”“Quite right, my boy; quite right.”“But it was very hard work, sir—very hard indeed.”“Yes, yes; so I suppose,” said the Doctor thoughtfully; “and you have placed a problem before me, my boy, that I feel is as difficult to resolve. I am very, very glad that you have kept it in your own breast, Severn; and the more I think of it the more I feel that it is only an intangible vapour of the brain. But, all the same, the matter is so mysterious and so important that I should not be doing my duty if I did not have the well examined.”“You will, sir?” cried the boy eagerly.“Yes, Severn, I will,” said the Doctor firmly, “and at once. But this must be a private matter between us two. Let those who like consider the act eccentric; I shall have it done, and I look to you to take no one else into your confidence over the matter.”“No, sir; I’ll not say a word,” cried Glyn. “But,”—he hesitated—“but—”“Well, Severn; speak out.”“If it all turns out fancy, all imagination, sir, you will not be angry?”“No, Severn, not in the least,” said the Doctor, smiling. “Now go and send Wrench to me.”As he spoke the Doctor turned and rang, with the consequence that Glyn met the footman in the passage coming to answer the bell, and half an hour later, when the boy made it his business to casually stroll towards the well-house, he heard voices, and on looking in found Wrench, who had changed his livery for an old pair of trousers and vest, talking to the gardener and making plans for the emptying of the well.
“Is any one with the Doctor, Wrench?”
“No, sir,” replied the man distantly, and he looked curiously at Glyn. “Aren’t you well this morning, sir?”
“Yes—no. Don’t ask questions,” cried the boy petulantly.
“All right, sir,” said the man. “I don’t want to ask no questions. There’s been too much of it lately. Suspicions and ugly looks, and the rest of it. I’d have given warning the other day, only if I had, the next thing would have been more suspicion and the police perhaps had in to ask me why I wanted to go. Shall I ask the Doctor, sir, if he will see you?”
“No,” cried Glyn, and walking past the man he tapped at the study-door, and in response to the Doctor’s deep, “Come in,” entered.
“What does this mean?” muttered Wrench. “I don’t like listening; but if I went there and put my ear to the keyhole I could catch every word; and so sure as I did somebody would come into the hall and find me at it. So I won’t go. But what does it mean? Young Severn’s found out all about it, as sure as I stand here. Then it’s one of the boys after all. Well, I don’t care about it as long as it ain’t me or Sam, so I’ll go on with my work.”
Meanwhile Glyn had entered, closed the door after him, and stood gazing at the Doctor with a curious sensation in his breast that seemed to stop all power of speaking connectedly, as he had meant to do when he had obeyed the impulse to make a clean breast to his old preceptor.
“Well, Severn,” said the Doctor gravely, as he laid down his pen, thrust up his glasses till they were stopped by the stiff grey hair, and allowed himself to sink back in his writing-chair, “you wish to speak to me?”
“Yes, sir, please; I—” Glyn stopped short.
That was all that would come, so the Doctor waited for a few moments to give him time to collect himself, and then with an encouraging smile: “Are you unwell, my boy? Do you wish to see our physician?”
Glyn uttered a kind of gasp, and then, making a tremendous effort, the power to speak returned, and he cried, “Oh no, sir; I am quite well, only—only I am in great trouble, and I want to speak to you.”
“Indeed!” said the Doctor gravely, as he placed his elbows upon the table, joined his finger-tips, and looked over them rather sadly at his visitor. “I am glad you have come, my boy,” he continued gently, “for I like my pupils to look up to me as if for the time being I stood in the place of their parents. Now then, speak out. What is it? Some fresh quarrel between you and Mr Slegge?”
“No, sir,” cried Glyn. “It’s about that dreadful business of Singh’s belt.”
“Ah!” said the Doctor, rather more sharply. “You know something about it?”
“Yes, sir. It’s about that I have come. About people being wrongfully suspected, and all the unpleasantry.”
“Indeed!” said the Doctor, and he now spoke rather coldly. “You know, Severn, where it is?”
“I—I think so, sir. Yes, sir,” continued the boy, speaking more firmly, “and I want to tell you all I do know.”
The Doctor fixed his eyes rather sternly now, for a strange suspicion was entering his mind, due to the boy’s agitated manner and his hesitating, half-reticent speech.
“Well,” he said, “go on; and I beg, my boy, that you tell me everything without reservation, though I am sorry, deeply grieved, that you should have to come and speak to me like this.”
Glyn seemed to breathe far more freely now, and as if the nervous oppression at his breast had passed away.
“You see, sir,” he began, “I have known all along that Singh had that very valuable belt. It was his father’s, and the Maharajah used to wear it; and when he died my father took charge of it and all the Maharajah’s valuable jewels as well.”
“Yes,” said the Doctor slowly. “He was the late Prince’s executor and Singh’s guardian.”
“Yes, sir; and Singh was very eager to have it—oh, months and months before we came over here to school, and my father used to smile at him and tell him that he had far better not have it until he had grown older, and asked him why he who was such a boy yet should want such a rich ornament, and told him it was vanity. But Singh said it wasn’t that; it was because the people had been used to see his father wear it, and that now he was dead and he had become Maharajah they would think more of him and look up to him if he wore the belt himself. You see, sir, Singh told me it was like being crowned.”
“I see,” said the Doctor gravely, and he kept his eyes fixed upon the young speaker. “Go on.”
“Well, sir, father always put him off, and Singh didn’t like it, and asked for it again and again; but my father would never let him have it till we were coming slowly over here to England. We stopped for a month in Ceylon, and when we sailed again to come here, one day Singh asked father again to let him have it, so that he could wear the belt as soon as we reached England. And then father said he should have it if he would make a promise not to wear it unless he had to appear before the Queen. Then he was to put it away again, and not make a parade of himself in a country where the greatest people in the land were always dressed in the plainest way.”
“Your father spoke wisely and well, my boy,” said the Doctor gravely. “Great men do not depend upon show, but upon the jewels of worth and wisdom with which they have adorned themselves in their careers. Well, I repeat I am very glad you have come. Go on.”
“Yes, sir,” said Glyn, clearing his throat. “Singh promised father that he would do exactly as he was told, and the next day my father told me to try and keep Singh to his word. He said it would be very absurd now that we were going among strangers and a lot of boys of our own ages if Singh were tempted to make a show of the royal belt. ‘You be watchful,’ he said, ‘and help him when he seems weak, for he has naturally a good deal of Eastern vanity and pride in him.’”
“Quite true,” said the Doctor softly; “but he has improved wonderfully since he has been here.”
“Yes, sir; but every now and then he has bad fits, and has wanted to show off; but I was always able to stop him. Then, you see, sir—”
Glyn broke down, and as he met the Doctor’s steady gaze he seemed to make effort after effort to proceed, but in vain.
“I told you, my boy,” said the Doctor encouragingly, “to speak to me as if I were your father.”
“Yes, sir, I know,” cried Glyn passionately, “and I want to speak out plainly and clearly, but it won’t come.”
“Yes,” said the Doctor gravely; “it will, my boy. Go on to the end.”
“Yes, sir,” cried Glyn. “Well, sir, there has been all this trouble about the belt when it was missed out of Singh’s box.”
The Doctor bowed his head.
“I seem to have been able to think of nothing else, and I couldn’t do my lessons—I could hardly eat my meals—and at night I couldn’t sleep for thinking about the belt and what my father would say about it being lost.”
The Doctor bowed his head again very slowly and solemnly, and fixed his eyes once more upon Glyn’s flushed face.
“You see, sir, my father said so much to me about Singh being as it were in my charge, and told me how he trusted in my example, and in me being ready to give Singh a sensible word whenever he was disposed to do anything not becoming to an English lad.”
“Exactly, my boy,” said the Doctor. “Your father is a worthy trustee of this young ward, and it will be a terrible shock to him when he hears of this—er—er—accident and the loss.”
“Yes, sir, for you see, as he is the old Maharajah’s executor, the royal belt was in his care till Singh is old enough to be his own master; and father will feel that he is to blame for giving way and letting Singh have it so soon.”
“Exactly,” said the Doctor; “but, my boy, it seems to me that you are rather wandering away from your purpose, and are not telling me everything exactly as I should wish.”
“It’s because, sir, it won’t come; something seems to stop me. But I am trying, sir.”
“Well, I believe you, my boy,” said the Doctor. “Go on.”
“Yes, sir. Well, I told you that I could hardly eat or sleep for thinking about it.”
The Doctor sighed.
“And it seemed so horrid, sir, that so many people should be suspected for what one person alone must have done.”
“Yes,” said the Doctor, fixing him with his eyes again; and then as he met the boy’s frank, unblenching eyes his brow began to wear a curious look of perplexity, and he disjoined the tips of his fingers, picked up his quill-pen, and began slowly to litter the table-top by stripping off the plume.
“Well, sir,” continued Glyn, speaking very hurriedly now, “I have always been dreaming about it, and waking up with starts, sir, fancying I heard some one creeping into the room to get to Singh’s box; and one night it was so real that I seemed to hear some one go to Singh’s bedside, take out the keys from his pocket, crawl to his box, unlock it, and lift the lid, and then shut it and lock it again. And I lay there, sir, with my hands and face wet with perspiration, wanting to call out to Singh; but I couldn’t stir. But when all was silent again I crept out of bed and went to his box to find the keys in it; and I opened it quickly and felt inside, feeling sure that it was one of the boys who had stolen the belt and who had repented and come and put it back again.”
“And had he?” cried the Doctor, startled out of his grave calmness.
“No, sir; I think it was only my fancy. But I have been something like that over and over again.”
“Ah!” said the Doctor gravely once more. “The workings, my boy, of an uneasy mind.”
“Yes, sir, and that’s what held me back from coming to you to speak out.”
“Go on,” said the Doctor; “and speak plainly and to the point, my boy. What more have you to say?”
“Only this, sir,” cried Glyn huskily, “that the night before last I lay awake for a long time, thinking and thinking about the belt and about Singh lying there sleeping so easily and not troubling himself in the least about the loss of the emeralds; and then all at once, when my head was so hot with the worry that I felt as if I must get out and drink some cold water.—I don’t know how it was, but I began going over the big cricket-match in the field, and it was as if it was the day before, and I was fidgeting and fidgeting about the crowd there’d be, and a lot of strangers walking about the grounds and perhaps finding their way into the empty dormitories; and it all worried me so, sir, that it made me think that somebody dishonest might go to Singh’s box and carry off the emeralds, and they would never be found again.”
The Doctor leaned forward a little to gaze more fixedly in his pupil’s eyes. Then rising slowly, he reached over and placed his cool white hand upon Glyn’s forehead.
“Yes, sir,” said the boy quickly, “it’s hot—it’s hot; but it comes like that sometimes. I believe it’s from thinking too much.”
“Ah!” said the Doctor, subsiding again into his chair.
“Well, sir, I was so worried about the belt that I thought I wouldn’t say anything to Singh, but that I would take his keys, get out the case, and bring it to you in the morning.”
“Ah!” cried the Doctor excitedly now. “It would not have been right, my boy. But you did not do that.”
“No, sir,” said the boy, with a bitter laugh; “for the next minute I thought you would put it in your table-drawer, and that it wouldn’t be safe there, for strangers might come into this room, so I—” Glyn stopped, and the Doctor waited patiently. “It seemed so weak and foolish, sir,” continued Glyn at last, after moistening his parched lips with his tongue, “but I must tell you. I seemed to be obliged to do it. I took out the case and went downstairs past all the boys’ rooms, and got out through the lecture-hall window to go across the playground to the cricket-shed where the boys’ lockers are, and there I opened our locker and took out a ball of kite-string.”
“Yes,” said the Doctor. “Go on, go on.”
“Then, sir, I came back across the playground and turned into the yard to go into the well-house, where I tied the end of the kite-string round the case very tightly and safely, and then leaned over and lifted one of the flaps of the well lid—”
“And lowered the case down into the well?” cried the Doctor excitedly.
“Yes, sir,” said Glyn; “and I could smell the cool, damp sides of the place, and hear a faint dripping of the water as I let the string run through my fingers, till at last the case splashed and it ran down more slowly, seeming to jerk a little to and fro as a flat thing does when it sinks, till I felt it touch the bottom. And then I leaned over to feel for a place where I could tie the string to one of the loose bricks at the side.”
“But there are no loose bricks at the side, my boy,” said the Doctor.
“No, sir,” said the boy. “I couldn’t feel one; and then all at once, as I was feeling about, the ball slipped out of my fingers and fell below with a splash.”
“So that you could not pull the case up again?” cried the Doctor.
“Yes, sir,” said Glyn very slowly, and looking at him in a peculiar manner.
“And then,” said the Doctor, “what did you do?”
“Nothing, sir,” replied Glyn, “for just then the first bell rang.”
“What?” exclaimed the Doctor.
“And I started up in bed, sir. It was all a dream.”
“A dream!” cried the Doctor angrily. “Why, my good lad—”
“But it was all so real, sir, and I was thinking about it all day yesterday, and that perhaps it’s possible that I really did do it walking in my sleep.”
“Oh, impossible!” cried the Doctor.
“I don’t know, sir,” said the boy; “but you see, I might have done so.”
“Well—yes, you might,” said the Doctor slowly. “I did have a pupil once who was troubled with somnambulism. He used to walk into the next dormitory and scare the other boys.—Oh, but this is impossible!”
“I thought you’d say so, sir.”
“Yes,” said the Doctor, “impossible. Why, if it were true the belt must have been lying at the bottom of the well ever since the cricket-match weeks ago.”
“Yes, sir, and I must have done it then in my sleep; and the night before last I dreamed again what I dreamed before.”
“Tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut!” ejaculated the Doctor, rising now from his chair and beginning to walk to and fro excitedly. “Strange—most strange, and I feel sceptical in the extreme. It must all be imagination. An empty dream, brought about by the worry and anxiety of this unfortunate loss. Well, I am glad you have come, my boy, and—er—er—I must be frank with you. Your manner and the strangeness of your words half made me think that you had come, urged by your conscience, to make a confession of a very different kind.”
Glyn started; his lips parted, and he looked wildly in the Doctor’s eyes.
“Don’t look at me like that, my lad. Your manner suggested it, and I cannot tell you how relieved I feel.”
As the Doctor spoke he leaned over his writing-table and caught the boy’s hand in his, to press it warmly.
“But,” he said, as he subsided once more into his chair, “this must be a hallucination, an offspring of an overworked brain; and yet there are strange things in connection with the mental organisation, and I feel as if I ought to take some steps. What a relief it would be, my boy, to us all, the clearing away of a load of ungenerous suspicion. But one word: whom have you told of this?”
“No one, sir,” said Glyn.
“Not even Mr Singh?”
“No, sir. I have been ever since yesterday thinking about what I ought to do, and I came to the conclusion at last that I ought to come to you, sir.”
“Quite right, my boy; quite right.”
“But it was very hard work, sir—very hard indeed.”
“Yes, yes; so I suppose,” said the Doctor thoughtfully; “and you have placed a problem before me, my boy, that I feel is as difficult to resolve. I am very, very glad that you have kept it in your own breast, Severn; and the more I think of it the more I feel that it is only an intangible vapour of the brain. But, all the same, the matter is so mysterious and so important that I should not be doing my duty if I did not have the well examined.”
“You will, sir?” cried the boy eagerly.
“Yes, Severn, I will,” said the Doctor firmly, “and at once. But this must be a private matter between us two. Let those who like consider the act eccentric; I shall have it done, and I look to you to take no one else into your confidence over the matter.”
“No, sir; I’ll not say a word,” cried Glyn. “But,”—he hesitated—“but—”
“Well, Severn; speak out.”
“If it all turns out fancy, all imagination, sir, you will not be angry?”
“No, Severn, not in the least,” said the Doctor, smiling. “Now go and send Wrench to me.”
As he spoke the Doctor turned and rang, with the consequence that Glyn met the footman in the passage coming to answer the bell, and half an hour later, when the boy made it his business to casually stroll towards the well-house, he heard voices, and on looking in found Wrench, who had changed his livery for an old pair of trousers and vest, talking to the gardener and making plans for the emptying of the well.