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                          A HERO OF ROMANCE

[Illustration: "Perhaps you don't know who I am?" (_Page_ 155.)]

_A Hero of Romance_.]                            [_Frontispiece_.

                          A HERO OF ROMANCE

                                  BY

                            RICHARD MARSH

   _Author of "The Datchel Diamonds," "The Crime and the Criminal_"
                             _etc., etc_.

                    ILLUSTRATED BY HAROLD COPPING

                                LONDON

                       WARD, LOCK & CO. LIMITED

                        NEW YORK AND MELBOURNE

                               Contents

   CHAP.

       I Punishment at Mecklemburg House.

      II Tutor Baiting.

     III At Mother Huffham's.

      IV A Little Drive.

       V An Evening at Washington Villa.

      VI Afterwards.

     VII The Return of the Wanderer.

    VIII Preparing for Flight.

      IX The Start.

       X Another Little Drive.

      XI The Original Badger.

     XII A "Doss" House.

    XIII In Petersham Park.

     XIV In Trouble.

      XV Out of the Frying-pan into the Fire.

     XVI The Captain's Room.

    XVII Two Men and a Boy.

   XVIII The Boat-train.

     XIX To Jersey with a Thief.

      XX Exit Captain Tom.

     XXI The Disadvantages of not Being Able to Speak French.

    XXII The End of the Journey.

   XXIII The Land of Golden Dreams.

                              Chapter I

                   PUNISHMENT AT MECKLEMBURG HOUSE

It was about as miserable an afternoon as one could wish to see. May
is the poet's month, but there was nothing of poetry about it then.
True, it was early in the month, but February never boasted weather of
more unmitigated misery. At half-past two it was so dark in the
schoolroom of Mecklemburg House that one could with difficulty see to
read. Outside a cold drizzling rain was falling, a shrieking east wind
was rattling the windows in their frames, and a sullen haze was hiding
the leaden sky. As unsatisfactory a specimen of the English spring as
one could very well desire.

To make things better, it was half-holiday. Not that it much mattered
to the young gentleman who was seated in the schoolroom; it was no
half-holiday to him. A rather tall lad, some fourteen years of age,
broad and strongly built. This was Bertie Bailey.

Master Bertie Bailey was kept in; and the outrage this was to his
feelings was altogether too deep for words. To keep him in!--no wonder
the heavens frowned at such a crime!

Master Bertie Bailey was seated at a desk very much the worse for
wear; a long desk, divided into separate compartments, which were
intended to accommodate about a dozen boys. He had his arms upon the
desk, his face rested on his hands, and he was staring into vacancy
with an air of tragic gloom.

At the raised desk which stood in front of him before the window was
seated Mr. Till. Mr. Till's general bearing and demeanour was not much
more jovial than Master Bertie Bailey's; he was the tyrant usher who
had kept the youthful victim in. It was with a certain grim pleasure
that Bertie realized that Mr. Till's enjoyment of the keeping-in was
perhaps not much more than his own.

Mr. Till had a newspaper in his hand, and had apparently read it
through, advertisements and all. He looked over the top of it at
Bertie.

"Don't you think you'd better get on with those lines?" he asked.

Bertie had a hundred lines of _Paradise Lost_ to copy out. He paid no
attention to the inquiry; he did not even give a sign that he was
aware he had been spoken to, but continued to sit with his eyes fixed
on nothing, with the same air of mysterious gloom.

"How many have you done?" Mr. Till came down to see. There was a torn
copy of Milton's poems lying unopened beside Bertie on the desk; in
front of him a slate which was quite clean, and no visible signs of a
slate pencil. Mr. Till took up the slate and carefully examined it for
anything in the shape of lines.

"So you haven't begun?--why haven't you begun?" No answer. "Do you
hear me? why haven't you begun?"

Without troubling himself to alter in any way his picturesque posture,
Bertie made reply,--

"I haven't got a slate pencil."

"You haven't got a slate pencil? Do you mean to tell me you've sat
there for a whole hour without asking for a slate pencil? I'll soon
get you one."

Mr. Till went to his desk and produced a piece about as long as his
little finger, placing it in front of Bertie. Bertie eyed it from a
corner of his eye.

"It isn't long enough."

"Don't tell me; take your arms off the desk and begin those lines at
once."

Bertie very leisurely took his arms off the desk, and delicately
lifted the piece of slate pencil.

"It wants sharpening," he said. He began to look for his knife,
standing up to facilitate the search. He hunted in all his pockets,
turning out the contents of each upon the desk; finally, from the
labyrinthine depths of some mysterious depository in the lining of his
waistcoat, he produced the ghost of an ancient pocket-knife. As though
they were fragile treasures of the most priceless kind, he carefully
replaced the contents of his pockets. Then, at his ease, he commenced
to give an artistic point to his two-inch piece of slate pencil. Mr.
Till, who had taken up a position in front of the window with his
hands under his coat tails, watched the proceedings with anything but
a gratified countenance.

"That will do," he grimly remarked, when Bertie had considerably
reduced the original size of his piece of pencil by attempting to
produce a point of needlelike fineness. Bertie wiped his knife upon
his coat-sleeve, removed the pencil dust with his pocket-handkerchief,
and commenced to write. Before he had got half-way through the first
line a catastrophe occurred.

"I've broken the point," he observed, looking up at Mr. Till with
innocence in his eyes.

"I tell you what it is," said Mr. Till, "if you don't let me have
those lines in less than no time I'll double them. Do you think I'm
going to stop here all the afternoon?"

"You needn't stop," suggested Bertie, looking at his broken pencil.

"I daresay!" snorted Mr. Till. The last time Bertie had been left
alone in the schoolroom on the occasion of his being kept in, he had
perpetrated atrocities which had made Mr. Fletcher's hair stand up on
end. Mr. Fletcher was the head-master. Orders had been given that
whenever Bertie was punished, somebody was to stay in with him. "Now,
none of your nonsense; you go on with those lines."

Bertie bent his head with a studious air. A hideous scratching noise
arose from the slate. Mr. Till clapped his hands to his ears.

"Stop that noise!"

"If you please, sir, I think this pencil scratches," Bertie said.
Considering that he was holding the pencil perpendicularly, the
circumstance was not surprising.

"Take my advice, Bailey, and do those lines." Advancing with an
inflamed countenance, Mr. Till stood over the offending pupil.
Resuming his studious posture Bertie recommenced to write. He wrote
two lines, not too quickly, nor by any means too well, but still he
wrote them. In the middle of the third line another catastrophe
happened.

"Please, sir, I've broken the pencil right in two." It was quite
unnecessary for him to say so, the fact was self-evident, though with
so small a piece it had required no slight exertion of strength and
some dexterous manipulation to accomplish the feat. The answer was a
box on the ears.

"What did you do that for?" asked Bertie, rising from his seat, and
rubbing the injured portion with his hand.

Now it was distinctly understood that Mecklemburg House Collegiate
School was conducted on the principle of no corporal punishment. It
was a prominent line in the prospectus. "_Under no circumstances is
corporal punishment administered_." As a rule the principle was
consistently carried out to its legitimate conclusion, not with the
completest satisfaction to every one concerned. Yet Mr. Fletcher, one
of the most longsuffering of men, and by no means the strictest
disciplinarian conceivable, had been more than once roused into
administering short and sharp justice upon refractory youth. But what
was excusable in Mr. Fletcher was not to be dreamed of in the
philosophy of anybody else. For an assistant-master to strike a pupil
was a crime; and Mr. Till knew it, and Master Bertie Bailey knew it
too.

"What did you do that for?" repeated Bertie.

Mr. Till was crimson. He was not a hasty tempered man, but to-day
Master Bertie Bailey had been a burden greater than he could bear. Yet
he had very literally made a false stroke, and Bertie was just the
young gentleman to make the most of it.

"If I were to tell Mr. Fletcher, he'd turn you off," said Bertie. "He
turned Mr. Knox off for hitting Harry Goddard."

Harry Goddard's only relation was a maiden aunt, and this maiden aunt
had peculiar opinions. In her opinion for anybody to lay a punitory
hand upon her nephew was to commit an act tantamount to sacrilege.
Harry had had a little difference with Emmett minor, and had borne
away the blushing honours of a bloody nose and a black eye with
considerable _sang-froid_; but when Mr. Knox resented his filling his
best hat with half-melted snow by presenting him with two or three
smart taps upon a particular portion of his frame, Harry wrote home to
his aunt to complain of the indignity he had endured. The result was
that the ancient spinster at once removed the outraged youth from the
sanguinary precincts of Mecklemburg House, and that Mr. Fletcher
dismissed the offending usher.

As Mr. Till stood eyeing his refractory pupil, all this came forcibly
to his mind. He knew something more than Bertie did; he knew that when
Mr. Fletcher, smarting at the loss of a remunerative pupil, had made
short work of his unfortunate assistant, he had also taken advantage
of the occasion to call Mr. Till into his magisterial presence, and to
then and there inform him, that should he at any time lay his hand
upon a pupil, under any provocation of any kind whatever, the result
would be that Mr. Knox's case would be taken as a precedent, and he
would be instantaneously dismissed.

And now he had struck Bertie, and here was Bertie threatening to
inform his employer of what he had done.

"If you don't let me off these lines," said Bertie, pursuing his
advantage, "I'll tell Mr. Fletcher as soon as he comes home, you see
if I don't."

Mecklemburg House Collegiate School was not a scholastic establishment
of any particular eminence; indeed, whatever eminence it possessed was
of an unsavoury kind. Nor was the position of its assistant-master at
all an enviable one. There was the senior assistant, Mr. Till, and
there was the junior, Mr. Shane. Mr. Till received £30 a year, and Mr.
Shane, a meek, melancholy youth of about seventeen, received sixteen.
Nor could the duties of either of these gentlemen be considered light.
But if the pay was small and the work large, the intellectual
qualifications required were by no means of an unreasonable kind.
Establishments of the Mecklemburg House type are fading fast away.
English private schools are improving every day. Mr. Till, conscious
of his deficiencies, was only too well aware that if he lost his
present situation, another would be hard to find. So, in the face of
Bertie's threat, he temporized.

"I didn't mean to hit you! You shouldn't exasperate me!"

Bertie looked him up and down. If ever there was a young gentleman who
needed the guidance of a strong hand, Bertie was he. He was not a
naturally bad boy,--few boys are,--but he hated work, and he scorned
authority. All means were justifiable which enabled him to shirk the
one and defy the other. He was just one of those boys who might become
bad if he was not brought to realize the difference between good and
evil, right and wrong. And it would need sharp discipline to bring him
to such knowledge.

He had a supreme contempt for Mr. Till. All the boys had. The only
person they despised more was Mr. Shane. It was the natural result of
the system pursued at Mecklemburg House that the masters were looked
upon by their pupils as quite unworthy their serious attention.

Bertie had had about a dozen impositions inflicted on him even within
the last days. He had not done one of them. He never did do them. None
of the boys ever did do impositions set them by anybody but Mr.
Fletcher. They did not by any means make a point of doing his.

"You will do me fifty lines," Mr. Till would say to half a dozen boys
half a dozen times over in the course of a single morning. He spoke to
the wind; no one ever did them, no one would have been so much
surprised as Mr. Till if they had been done.

On the present occasion Mr. Fletcher had gone to town on business, and
Mr. Till had been left in supreme authority. Bailey had signalised the
occasion by behaving in a manner so outrageous that, if any semblance
of authority was to be kept at all, it was altogether impossible to
let him go scot free. As it was a half-holiday, Mr. Till had announced
his unalterable resolve that Bertie should copy out a hundred lines of
_Paradise Lost_, and that he should not leave the schoolroom till he
had written them.

The result so far had not been satisfactory. He had been in the
schoolroom considerably over an hour; he had written not quite three
lines, and here he was telling Mr. Till that if he did not let him off
entirely he would turn the tables on his master, and make matters
unpleasant for him. It looked as though Bertie would win the game.

Having taken the tutor's mental measure, he thrust his hands into his
trousers pockets, and coolly seated himself upon the desk. Then he
made the following observation,--

"I tell you what it is, old Till, I don't care a snap for you."

Mr. Till simply glared. He realized, not for the first time, that the
pupil was too much for the master. Bertie continued,--

"My father always pays regularly in advance. If I wrote home and told
him that you'd hit me, for nothing"--Bertie paused and fixed his stony
gaze on Mr. Till--"he'd take me home at once, and then what would
Fletcher say?" Bertie paused again, and pointed his thumb over his
left shoulder. "He'd say, 'Walk it'!"

This was one way of putting it. Though Mr. Bailey was by no means such
a foolish person as his son suggested. He was very much unlike Harry
Goddard's maiden aunt. Had Bertie written home any such letter of
complaint--which, by the way, he was far too wise to have dreamed of
doing--the consequences would in all probability have been the worse
for him. The father knew his son too well to be caught with chaff.
Unfortunately, Mr. Till did not know this; he had Mr. Knox's fate
before his eyes.

"You'd better let me off these lines," pursued the inexorable Bertie;
"you'd better, you know."

"You're an impudent young----" But Bertie interrupted him.

"Now don't call me names, or I'll tell Fletcher. He only said the
other day that all his pupils were to be treated like young
gentlemen."

"Young gentlemen!" snorted Mr. Till with scorn.

"Yes, young gentlemen. And don't you say we're not young gentlemen,
because Mecklemburg House Collegiate School is an establishment for
young gentlemen." And Bertie grinned. "You'd better let me off these
lines, you know."

"You know I never hurt you; you shouldn't exasperate me; you're the
most exasperating boy I ever knew; there's absolutely no bearing with
your insolence! You'd try the patience of a saint."

"I shouldn't be surprised if I was deaf for a week." He rubbed the
injured part reflectively. "I've heard Fletcher say it's dangerous to
hit a fellow on the ear. You'd better let me off those lines, you
know."

Mr. Till, fidgeting about the room, suddenly burst into eloquence. "I
wonder if it's any use appealing to your better nature? They say boys
have a better nature, though I never remember to have seen much of it.
What pleasure do you find in making my life unbearable? What have I
ever done to you that you should try to drive me mad? Are you
naturally cruel? My sole aim is for your future welfare! Your sole aim
is for my ruin!"

Bertie continued to rub his ear.

"Bailey, if I let you off these lines will you promise to try to give
me less cause to punish you?"

"You can't help letting me off them anyhow," said Bertie.

"Can't I? I suppose, young gentleman, you think you're getting the
best of me?"

"I know I am," said Bertie.

"Oh, you know you are! Then let me do my best to relieve you of that
delusion. Shall I tell you what you are doing? You're doing your best
to sow the seeds of a shameful manhood and a wasted life; if you don't
take care you'll reap the harvest by-and-by! It isn't only that you're
refusing to avail yourself of opportunities of education, you're doing
yourself much greater harm than that. You think you're getting the
best of me; but shall I tell you what's getting the best of you?--a
mean, cruel, cowardly spirit, which will be to you a sterner master
than ever I have been. You think yourself brave because you jeer and
mock at me, and flout all my commands! Why, my boy, were I better
circumstanced, and free to act upon my own discretion, you would
tremble in your shoes! The very fact of your permitting yourself to
threaten me, on account of punishment which you know was perfectly
well deserved, shows what sort of boy you are!"

Bertie's only comment was, "You had better let me off those lines."

"I will let you off the lines!"

Bertie sprang to his feet, and began to put slate and book away with
abundance of clatter.

"Stay one moment--leave those things alone! It is not the punishment
which degrades a man, Bailey; it is the thing of which he has been
guilty. I cannot degrade you; it is yourself you are degrading. Take
my advice, turn over a new leaf, learn not to take advantage of a man
whose only offence is that he does his best to do you good; don't
think yourself brave because you venture to attack where defence is
impossible; and, above all, don't pride yourself on taking your pigs
to a bad market. You are so foolish as to think yourself clever
because you throw away all your best chances, and get absolutely worse
than nothing in return. Bailey, get your Bible, and look for a verse
which runs something like this, 'Cast your bread upon the waters, and
you shall find it after many days.' Now you can go."

And Bertie went; and, being in the safe neighbourhood of the door, he
put his fingers to his nose; by which Mr. Till knew, not for the first
time, that he had spoken in vain.

                              Chapter II

                            TUTOR BAITING

There were twenty-seven boys at Mecklemburg House; and even this small
number bade fair to decrease. Last term there had been thirty-three;
the term before there had been forty. Within quite recent years
considerably over a hundred boys had occupied the draughty dormitories
of the great old red-brick house.

But the glory was departing. It is odd how little our fathers and our
grandfathers in general knew or cared about the science of education.
Boys were pitchforked into schools which had absolutely nothing to
recommend them except a flourishing prospectus; schools in which
nothing was taught, in which the physique of the lads was neglected,
and in which their moral nature was treated as a thing which had no
existence. A large number of "schoolmasters" had no more idea of true
education than they had of flying. They were speculators pure and
simple, and they treated their boys as goods out of which they were to
screw as much money as they possibly could, and in the shortest
possible space of time.

Mecklemburg House Collegiate School was a case in point. It had been a
school ever since the first of the Georges; and it is, perhaps, not
too much to say, that out of the large number of boys who had been
educated beneath its roof, not one of them had received a wholesome
education. Yet it had always been a paying property. More than one of
its principals had retired with a comfortable competency. Certainly
the number of its pupils had never stood at such a low ebb as at the
time of which we tell. Why the number should be so uncomfortably low
was a mystery to its present principal, Beauclerk Fletcher. The place
had belonged to his father, and his father had always found it bring
something more than daily bread. But even daily bread was beginning to
fail with Beauclerk Fletcher. Twenty-seven pupils at such a place as
Mecklemburg House! and the majority of them upon "reduced terms"! Mr.
Fletcher, never the most enterprising of men, was beginning to be
overwhelmed beneath an avalanche of debt, and to feel that the fight
was beyond his strength.

A great, old, rambling red-brick house, about equi-distant from
Cobham, Byfleet, Weybridge--all towns in Surrey--lying in about the
middle of the irregular square which those four towns form, the house
carried the story of its decaying glories upon its countenance. Those
Georgian houses were solid structures, and the mere fabric was in
about as good a condition as it had ever been! but in the exterior of
the building the change was sadly for the worse. Many of the rooms
were unoccupied, panes were broken in the windows, curtains were
wanting, the windows looked as though they were seldom or never
cleaned. The whole place looked as though it were neglected, which
indeed it was. Slates were off the roof, waste water pipes hung loose
and rattled in every passing breeze. As to the paved courtyard in
front, grass and weeds and moss almost hid the original stones. Mr.
Fletcher was only too conscious of the story all this told; but to put
things shipshape and neat, and to keep them so, required far more
money than he had to spend; so he only groaned at each new evidence of
ruin and decay.

The internal arrangements, the domestic economy, the whole system of
education, everything in connection with Mecklemburg House was in the
same state of decrepitude and age--worn-out traditions rather than
living things. And Mr. Fletcher was very far from being the man to
breathe life into the dead bones and bid them live. The struggle was
beyond his strength.

There is no creature in God's world sharper than the average boy, no
one quicker to understand the strength of the hand which holds him.
The youngest pupil at Mecklemburg House was perfectly aware that the
school was a "duffing" school, that Mr. Fletcher was a "duffing"
principal, and that everything about the place was "duffing"
altogether. Only let a boy have this opinion about his school, and, so
far as any benefit is concerned which he is likely to derive from his
sojourn there, he might almost as profitably be transported to the
Cannibal Islands.

On the half-holiday on which our story opens, the pupils of
Mecklemburg House were disporting themselves in what was called the
playroom. Formerly, in its prosperous days, the room had been used as
a second schoolroom, the one at present used for that purpose being
not nearly large enough to contain the pupils. But those days were
gone; at present, so far from being overcrowded, the room looked
empty, and could have with ease accommodated twice the whole number of
pupils which the school contained. So what was once the schoolroom was
called the playroom instead.

"Stupid nonsense! keeping a fellow in because it rains!" said Charles
Griffin, looking through the dirty window at the grimy world without.

"It doesn't rain," declared Dick Ellis. "Call this rain! I say, Mr.
Shane, can't we go down to the village? I want to get something for
this cough of mine; it's frightful." And with some difficulty Dick
managed to produce a sepulchral cough from somewhere about the region
of his boots.

"Mrs. Fletcher says you are not to go out while it rains," answered
Mr. Shane in his mildest possible manner.

"Mrs. Fletcher!" grunted Dick. At Mecklemburg House the grey mare was
the better horse. If Mr. Fletcher was not an ideal head-master, Mrs.
Fletcher was emphatically head-mistress.

That half-holiday was a pleasant one for Mr. Shane. It was a rule that
the boys were never to be left alone. If they were out a master was to
go with them, if they were in a master was to supervise. So, as Mr.
Till was engaged with the refractory Bertie, Mr. Shane was in charge
of the play-room.

In charge, literally, and in terror, too. For it may be maintained
without the slightest exaggeration, that he was much more afraid of
the boys than the boys of him. On what principle of selection Mr.
Fletcher chose his assistant-masters it is difficult to say; but
whatever else Mr. Shane was, a disciplinarian he certainly was not. He
was the mildest-mannered young man conceivable, awkward, shy, slight,
thin, not bad-looking, with a faint, watery smile, which at times gave
quite a ghastly appearance to his countenance, and a deprecatory
manner which seemed to say that you had only to let him alone to earn
his eternal gratitude. But the boys never did let him alone, never. By
day and night, awake and sleeping, they did their best to make his
life a continual misery.

"If we can't go out," suggests Griffin, "I vote we have a lark with
Shane."

Mr. Shane smiled, by no means jovially.

"You mustn't make a noise," he murmured, in that soft, almost
effeminate voice of his. "Mrs. Fletcher particularly said you were not
to make a noise."

"Right you are. I say, Shane, you stand against the wall, and let's
shy things at you." This from Griffin.

"You're not to throw things about," said Mr. Shane.

"Then what are we to do, that's what I want to know? It seems to me
we're not to do anything. I never saw such a beastly hole! I say,
Shane, let half of us get hold of one of your arms, and the other half
of the other, and have a pull at you--tug-of-war, you know. We won't
make a noise."

Mr. Shane did not seem to consider the proposal tempting. He was
seated in the window, and had a book on his knees which he wanted to
read. Not a work of light literature, but a German grammar. It was the
dream of his life to prepare himself for matriculation at the London
University. This undersized youth was a student born; he had company
which never failed him, a company of dreams. He dreamed of a future in
which he was a scholar of renown; and in every moment he could steal
he strove to bring himself a step nearer to the realization of his
dreams.

"Get up, Shane!--what's that old book you've got?" Griffin made a
snatch at the grammar. Mr. Shane jealously put it behind his back.
Books were in his eyes things too precious to be roughly handled.
"Come and have a lark; what an old mope you are!" Griffin caught him
by the arm and swung him round into the room; the boy was as tall, and
probably as strong as the usher.

The boys were chiefly engaged in doing nothing; nobody ever did do
much in that establishment. If a boy had a hobby it was laughed out of
him. Literature was at a discount: _Spring-Heeled Jack_ and _The
Knights of the Road_ were the sort of works chiefly in request. There
was no school library, none of the boys seemed to have any books of
their own. There was neither cricket nor football, no healthy games of
any sort. Even in the playground the principal occupation was loafing,
with a little occasional bullying thrown in. Mr. Fletcher was too
immersed in the troubles of pounds, shillings, and pence to have any
time to spare for the amusements of the boys. Mr. Till was not
athletic. Mr. Shane still less so. On fine afternoons the boys were
packed off with the ushers for a walk, but no more spiritless
expeditions could be imagined than the walks at Mecklemburg House. The
result was that the youngsters' life was a wearisome monotony, and
they were in perpetual mischief for sheer want of anything else to do.
And mischief so often took the shape of cruelty.

Charlie Griffin swung Mr. Shane out into the middle of the room, and
immediately one boy after another came stealing up to him.

"I say, Shane, let's play roley-poley with you," said Brown major.
Some one in the rear threw a hard pellet of brown paper, which struck
Mr. Shane smartly on the head. He winced.

"Who threw that?" asked Griffin. "I say, Shane, why don't you whack
him? If I were a man I wouldn't let little boys throw things at me;
you are a man, aren't you, Shane?" He gave another jerk to the arm
which he still held.

"You're not to pull my arm, Griffin; you hurt me. I wonder why you
boys can't leave me alone."

"Go along! not really! We're only having a game, Shane; we're not in
school, you know. What shall we do with him, you fellows? I vote we
tie him in a chair, and stick needles and pins into him; he's sure to
like that--he's such a jolly old fellow, Shane is."

"Why don't you let us go out?" asked Ellis.

"You know Mrs. Fletcher said you were not to go."

"Oh, bother Mrs. Fletcher! what's that got to do with it? We won't
tell her if you let us go."

Mr. Shane sighed. Had it rested with him he would have been only too
glad to let them go. Two or three hours of his own company would have
been like a glimpse of paradise. But there was Mrs. Fletcher; she was
a lady whose indignation was not to be lightly faced.

"If you won't let us go," said Ellis, "we'll make it hot for you. Do
you think we're a lot of babies, to be melted by a drop of rain?"

"You know it's no use asking me. Mrs. Fletcher said you were not to go
out if it rained, and it is raining."

"It's not raining," boldly declared Griffin. "Call this rain! why,
it's not enough to wet a cat! I never saw such a molly-coddle set-out.
I go out when I'm at home if it pours cats and dogs; nobody minds; why
should they? Come on, Shane, let's go, there's a trump; we won't
sneak, and we'll be back in half a jiff.

"I wish you would let me alone," said Mr. Shane. Somebody snatched his
book out of his hand. He turned swiftly to recover it, but the captor
was out of reach. "Give me my book!" he cried. "How dare you take my
book!"

"Here's a lark! catch hold, Griffin." Mr. Shane, hurrying to recover
his treasure, saw it dexterously thrown above his reach into the hands
of Charlie Griffin.

"Give me my book, Griffin!" And he made a rush at Griffin.

"Catch, boys!" Griffin threw the book to some one else before Mr.
Shane could reach him. It was thrown from one to the other, from end
to end of the room, probably not being improved by the way in which it
was handled.

The usher stood in the midst of the laughing boys, a picture of
helplessness. The grammar had cost him half a crown at a second-hand
bookstall. Half a crown represented to him a handsome sum. There were
many claims upon his sixteen pounds a year; he had to think once, and
twice, and thrice before he spent half a crown upon a book. His books
were to him his children. In those dreams of future glory his books
were his constant companions, his open sesame, his royal road to fame;
with their aid he could do so much, without their aid so little. So
now and then he ventured to spend half a crown upon a volume which he
wanted.

The grammar, being badly aimed, fell just in front of him. He made a
dash at it. Some one gave him a push and he fell sprawling on the
floor; but he seized the book with his left hand. Griffin, falling on
it tooth and nail, caught hold of it before he could secure it from
danger. There was a rush of half a dozen. Every one wanted a finger in
the pie. The grammar was clutched by half a dozen hands at once. The
back was rent off, leaves pulled out, the book was torn to shreds. Mr.
Shane lay on the floor, with the ruins of his grammar in his hands.

Just then Bertie Bailey entered the room, victorious from his contest
with Mr. Till. A shout of welcome greeted him.

"Hullo, Bailey! have you done the lines?"

Bertie, a deliberate youth as a rule, took his time to answer. He
surveyed the scene, then he put his fingers to his nose, repeating the
gesture with which he had retreated from Mr. Till.

"Catch me at it!--think I'm a silly?" Then he put his hands into his
pockets, and slouched into the centre of the room. The boys crowded
round him.

"Did he let you off?" asked Griffin.

"Of course he let me off; I made him: he knew better than to try to
make me do his lines."

Then he told the story; the boys laughed. The way in which the ushers
were compelled to stultify themselves was a standing joke at
Mecklemburg House. That Mr. Till should have been forced to eat his
own words, and to let insubordination go unpunished, was a humorous
idea to them.

Mr. Shane still remained upon the floor. He was engaged in gathering
together the remnants of his grammar. Perhaps a pot of paste, with
patient manipulation, might restore it yet. He would give himself a
great deal of labour to avoid the expenditure of another half-crown;
perhaps he had not another half-crown to spend.

"What's the row?" asked Bertie, seeing Mr. Shane engaged in gathering
up the fragmentary leaves. They told him.

"I'm going out," said Bailey, "and I should like to see anybody stop
me. I say, Mr. Shane, I want to go down to the village."

Mr. Shane repeated his stock phrase.

"Mrs. Fletcher said no one was to go out while it rained." He had
collected all the remnants of his grammar, and was rising with them in
his hand.

"Give me hold!" exclaimed Bertie; and he snatched what was left of the
book out of the usher's hands.

"Bailey!" cried Mr. Shane.

"Look here, I want to go down to the village. I suppose I may, mayn't
I?"

"Mrs. Fletcher said no one was to go out if it rained," stammered Mr.
Shane.

"If you don't let me go, I'll burn this rubbish!" Bertie flourished
the ruined grammar in the tutor's face. Mr. Shane made a dart to
recover his property; but Bertie was too quick for him, and sprang
aside beyond his reach. It is not improbable that if it had come to a
tussle Mr. Shane would have got the worst of it.

"Who's got a match?" asked Bertie. Some one produced half a dozen.
"Will you let me go?"

"Don't burn it," said Mr. Shane. "It cost me half a crown; I only
bought it last week."

"Then let me go."

"What'll Mrs. Fletcher say?"

"How's she to know unless you tell her? I'll be back before tea. I
don't care if it cost you a hundred half-crowns, I'll burn it. Make up
your mind. Is it going to cost you half a crown to keep me in?"

Bertie struck a match. Mr. Shane attempted to rush forward to put it
out, but some of the boys held him back. His heart went out to his
book as though it were a child.

"If I let you go, you promise me to be back within half an hour? I
don't know what Mrs. Fletcher will say if she should hear of it;--and
don't get wet."

"I'll promise you fast enough. Mrs. Fletcher won't hear of it; and
what if she does? She can't eat you. You needn't be afraid of my
getting wet."

"I shan't let anybody else go."

"Oh yes, you will! You'll let Griffin and Ellis go; you don't think
I'm going all that way alone?"

"And me!" cried Edgar Wheeler. Pretty nearly all the other boys joined
him in the cry.

"I am not going to have all you fellows coming with me," announced
Bertie. "Wheeler can come; but as for the rest of you, you can stay at
home and go to bed--that's the best place for little chaps like you.
Now then, Shane, look alive; is it going to cost you half a crown, or
isn't it?"

Mr. Shane sighed. If ever there was a case of a round peg in a square
hole, Mr. Shane's position at Mecklemburg House was a case in point.
The youth, for he was but a youth, was a good youth; he had an
earnest, honest, practical belief in God; but surely God never
intended him for an assistant-master. Perhaps in the years to come he
might drift into the place which had been prepared for him in the
world, but it was difficult to believe that he was in it now. A
studious dreamer, who did nothing but dream and study, he would have
been no more out of his element in a bear garden than in the extremely
difficult and eminently unsatisfactory position which he was
supposed--it was veritable supposition--to fill at Mecklemburg House.

"How many of you want to go?"

"There's me,"--Bertie was not the boy to take the bottom seat--"and
Griffin, and Ellis, and Wheeler, that's all. Now what is the good of
keeping messing about like this?"

"You're sure you won't be more than half an hour?"

"Oh, sure as sticks."

"And what shall I say to Mrs. Fletcher if she finds out? You're sure
to lay all the blame on me." Mr. Shane had a prophetic eye.

"Say you thought it didn't rain."

"I don't think it does rain much." Mr. Shane looked out of the window,
and salved his conscience with the thought. "Well, if you're quite
sure you won't get wet, and you won't be more than half an
hour--you--can--go." The latter three words came out, as it were,
edgeways and with difficulty from the speaker's mouth, as if even he
found the humiliation of his attitude difficult to swallow.

"Come along, boys!--here's your old book!" Bertie flung the grammar
into the air, the leaves went flying in all directions, the four boys
went clattering out of the room with noise enough for twenty, and Mr.
Shane was left to recover his dignity and collect the scattered volume
at his leisure.

But Nemesis awaited him. No sooner had the conquering heroes
disappeared than an urchin, not more than eight or nine years of age,
catching up one of the precious leaves, exclaimed,--

"Let's tear the thing to pieces!" The speaker was little Willie
Seymour, Bertie Bailey's cousin. It was his first term at school, but
he already bade fair to do credit to the system of education pursued
at Mecklemburg House.

"Right you are, youngster," said Fred Philpotts, an elder boy. "It's a
burning shame to let them go and keep us in. Let's tear it all to
pieces."

And they did. There was a sudden raid upon the scattered leaves; at
the mercy of twenty pairs of mischievous hands, they were soon reduced
to atoms so minute as to be altogether beyond the hope of any possible
recovery. Nothing short of a miracle could make those tiny scraps of
printed paper into a book again. And seeing it was so Mr. Shane leaned
his head against the window-pane and cried.

                             Chapter III

                         AT MOTHER HUFFHAM'S

It was only when Bailey and his friends were away from the house that
it occurred to them to consider what it was they had come out for.
They slunk across the grass-grown courtyard, keeping as close to the
wall as possible, to avoid the lynx-eyes of Mrs. Fletcher. That lady
was the only person in Mecklemburg House whose authority was not
entirely contemned. Let who would be master, she would be mistress;
and she had a way of impressing that fact upon those around her which
made it quite impossible for those who came within reach of her
influence to avoid respecting.

It was truly miserable weather. Any one but a schoolboy would have
been only too happy to have had a roof of any kind to shelter him, but
schoolboys are peculiar. It was one of those damp mists which not only
penetrate through the thickest clothing, and soak one to the skin, but
which render it difficult to see twenty yards in front of one, even in
the middle of the day. The day was drawing in; ere long the lamps
would be lighted; the world was already enshrouded in funeral gloom.
Not a pleasant afternoon to choose for an expedition to nowhere in
particular, in quest of nothing at all.

The boys slunk through the sodden mist, hands in their pockets, coat
collars turned up about their ears, hats rammed down over their eyes,
looking anything but a cheerful company. Griffin asked a question.

"I say, Bailey, where are you going?"

"To the village."

"What are you going to the village for?" This from Ellis.

"For what I am."

After this short specimen of convivial conversation the four trudged
on. Alas for their promise to Mr. Shane! The wet was already dripping
off their hats, and splashings of mud were ascending up the legs of
their trousers to about the middle of their back. In a minute or two
Wheeler began again.

"Have you got any money?"

Bertie pulled up short. "Have you?" he asked.

"I've got sevenpence."

"Then lend me half?"

"Lend me a penny? I'll pay you next week; honour bright, I will," said
Ellis.

Griffin was more concise. "Lend me twopence?" he asked.

Wheeler looked unhappy. It appeared that he was the only capitalist
among the four, and under the circumstances he did not feel exactly
proud of the position. Although sevenpence might do very well for one,
it would not be improved by quartering.

"Yes, I know, I daresay," he grumbled. "You're very fond of borrowing,
but you're not so fond of paying back again." He trudged on stolidly.

Bailey caught him by the arm. "You don't mean that you're not going to
lend me anything, after my asking for you to come out with me, and
all?"

"I'll lend you twopence."

"Twopence! What's twopence?"

"It's all you'll get; you can have it or lump it, I don't care;
I'm not dead nuts on lending you anything." Wheeler was a little
wiry-built boy, and when he meant a thing very much indeed he had an
almost terrier-like habit of snapping his jaws--he snapped them now.
Bailey trudged by his side with an air of dudgeon; he probably
reflected that, after all, twopence was better than nothing. But Ellis
and Griffin had their claims to urge. They apparently did not
contemplate with pleasure the prospect of tramping to and from the
village for the sake of the exercise alone. Ellis began,--

"I say, old fellow, you'll lend me a penny, won't you? I'm always game
for lending you."

"Look here, I tell you what it is, I won't lend you a blessed
farthing! It's like your cheek to ask me; you owe me ninepence from
last term."

"But I expect a letter from home in the morning with some money in it.
I'll pay you the ninepence with threepence interest--I'll pay you
eighteenpence--you see if I don't. And if you'll lend me a penny now
I'll give you twopence for it in the morning. Do now, there's a good
fellow, Wheeler; honour bright, I will."

For answer Wheeler put his finger to his eye and raised the eyelid.
"See any green in my eye?" he said.

"You're a selfish beast!" replied his friend. And so the four trudged
on. Then Griffin made his attempt.

"I'll let you have that knife, Wheeler, if you like."

"I don't want the knife."

"You can have it for threepence."

"I don't want it for threepence."

"You offered me fourpence for it yesterday."

"I've changed my mind."

Charlie pondered the matter in his mind. They were about half-way to
their destination, and already bore a closer resemblance to drowned
rats than living schoolboys. By the time they had gone there and back
again, it would be possible to wring the water out of their clothes;
what Mrs. Fletcher would have to say remained to be seen. After they
had gone a few yards further, and paddled through about half a dozen
more puddles, Charlie began again.

"I'll let you have it for twopence."

"I don't want it for twopence."

"It's a good knife." No answer. "It cost a shilling." Still no answer.
"There's only one blade broken." Still no reply. "And that's only got
a bit off near the point." Still silence. "It's a jolly good knife."
Then, with a groan, "I'll let you have it for a penny."

"I wouldn't give you a smack in the eye for it."

After receiving this truly elegant and generous reply, Griffin
subsided into speechless misery. It is not improbable that, so far as
he was himself concerned, he began to think that the expedition was a
failure.

In silence they reached the village. It was not a village of
portentous magnitude, since it only contained thirteen cottages and
one shop, the shop being the smallest cottage in the place. The
only point in its favour was that it was the nearest commercial
establishment to Mecklemburg House. The proprietor was a Mrs. Huffham,
an ancient lady, with a very bad temper, and a still worse
reputation--among the boys--for honesty in the direction of weights
and measures. It must be conceded that they could have had no worse
opinion of her than she had of them.

"Them young warmints, if they wants to buy a thing they wants ninety
ounces to the pound, and if they wants to pay for it, they wants you
to take eightpence for a shilling--oh, I knows 'em!" So Mrs. Huffham
declared.

At the door of this emporium parley was held. Ellis suddenly
remembered something.

"I say, I owe old Mother Huffham two-and-three." So far as the
gathering mist and the soaking rain enabled one to see, Dick's
countenance wore a lugubrious expression.

"Well, what of that?"

"Well"--Dick Ellis hesitated--"so long as that brute Stephen isn't
about the place I don't mind. He called out after me the other day,
that if I didn't pay he'd take the change out of me some other way."

The Stephen referred to was Mrs. Huffham's grandson, a stalwart young
fellow of twenty-one or two, who drove the carrier's cart to Kingston
and back. His ideas on pecuniary obligations were primitive. Having
learned from experience that it was vain to expect Mr. Fletcher to pay
his pupils' debts at the village shop, he had an uncomfortable way of
taking it out of refractory debtors in the shape of personal
chastisement. Endless disputes had arisen in consequence. Mr. Fletcher
had on more than one occasion threatened the summary Stephen with the
terrors of the law; but Stephen had snapped his fingers at Mr.
Fletcher, advising him to pay his own debts, lest worse things
happened to him. Then Mr. Fletcher had forbidden Mrs. Huffham to give
credit to the boys; but Mrs. Huffham was an obstinate old lady, and
treated the headmaster with no more deference than her grandson.
Finally, Mr. Fletcher had forbidden the boys to deal with Mrs.
Huffham; but in spite of his prohibition an active commerce was
carried on, and on more than one occasion the irate Stephen had been
moved to violence.

"You should have stopped at home," was Wheeler's not unreasonable
reply to Dick's confession. "I don't owe her anything. I don't see
what you wanted to come for, anyhow, if you haven't got any money and
you owe her two-and-three."

And turning the handle of the rickety door he entered Mrs. Huffham's
famed establishment. Bailey, rich in the possession of a prospective
loan of twopence, and Charlie Griffin followed close upon his heels.
After hesitating for a moment Ellis went in too. To remain shivering
outside would have been such a lame conclusion to a not otherwise too
satisfactory expedition, that it seemed to him like the last straw on
the camel's back. Besides, it was quite on the cards that the
impetuous Stephen would be engaged in his carrier's work, and be
pleasantly conspicuous by his absence from home.

The interior of the shop was pitchy dark. The little light
which remained without declined to penetrate through the small
lozenge-shaped windowpanes. Mrs. Huffham's lamp was not yet lit, and
the obscurity was increased by the quantity of goods, of almost every
description, which crowded to overflowing the tiny shop. No one came.

"Let's nick something," suggested the virtuously minded Griffin. Ellis
acted on the hint.

"I'm not going there and back for nothing, I can tell you."

On a little shelf at the side of the shop stood certain bottles of
sweets. Dick reached up to get one down. At that moment Wheeler gave
him a jerk with his arm. Ellis, catching at the shelf to steady
himself, brought down shelf, bottles and all, with a crash upon a
counter.

"Thieves!" cried a voice within. "Thieves!" and Mrs. Huffham came
clattering into the shop, out of some inner sanctum, with considerable
haste for one of her mature years. "Thieves!"

For some moments the old lady's eyes could see nothing in the darkness
of the shop. She stood, half in, half out, peering forward, where the
boys could just see her dimly in the shadow. They, deeming discretion
to be the better part of valour, and not knowing what damage they
might not have done, stood still as mice. Their first impulse was to
turn and flee, and Griffin was just feeling for the handle of the
door, preparatory to making a bolt for it, when heavy footsteps were
heard approaching outside, and the door was flung open with a force
which all but threw Griffin back upon his friends.

"Hullo!" said a voice; "is anybody in there?"

It was Stephen Huffham. With all their hearts the boys wished they had
respected authority and listened to Mr. Shane! There was a coolness
and promptness about Stephen Huffham's method of taking the law into
his own hands upon emergency which formed the basis of many a tale of
terror to which they had listened when tucked between the sheets at
night in bed.

Mr. Huffham waited for no reply to his question, but he laid an iron
hand upon Griffin's shoulder and dragged him out into the light.

"Come out of that! Oh, it's you, is it?" Charlie was gifted with
considerable powers of denial, but he found it quite beyond his power
to deny Mr. Huffham's assertion then. "Oh, there's some more of you,
are there? How many of you boys are there inside here?"

"They've been a-thieving the things!" came in Mrs. Huffham's shrill
treble from the back of the shop.

"Oh, they have, have they? We'll soon see about that. Unless I'm
blinder than I used to be, there's young Ellis over there, with whom
I've promised to have a word of a sort before to-day. You bring a
light, granny, and look alive; don't keep these young gentlemen
waiting, not by no manner of means."

Mrs. Huffham retreated to her parlour, and presently re-appeared with
a lighted lamp in her hand. This, with great deliberation, for her old
bones were stiff, and rheumatism forbade anything like undue haste,
she hung upon a nail, in such a position that its not too powerful
light shed as great an illumination as possible upon the contents of
her shop. Far too powerful an illumination to suit the boys, for it
brought into undue prominence the damage wrought by Ellis and his
friend. They eyed the ruins, and Mrs. Huffham eyed them, and Mr.
Stephen Huffham eyed them too. The old lady's feelings at the sight
were for a moment too deep for words, but Mr. Stephen Huffham soon
found speech.

"Who did this?" he asked; and there was something in the tone of the
inquiry which grated on his hearers' ears.

Had Dick Ellis and his friend deliberately planned to do as much
mischief as possible in the shortest possible space of time, they
could scarcely have succeeded better. Three or four of the bottles
were broken to pieces, and in their fall they had fallen on a little
glass case, the chief pride and ornament of Mrs. Huffham's shop, which
was divided into compartments, in one of which were cigars, in another
reels of cotton and hanks of thread, and in a third such trifles as
packets of hair-pins, pots of pomade, note-paper and envelopes, and a
variety of articles which might be classified under the generic name
of "fancy goods." The glass in this case was damaged beyond repair;
the sweets from the broken bottles had got inside, and had become
mixed with the cigars, and the paper, and the hair-pins, and the
pomade, and the rest of the varied contents.

Mr. Stephen Huffman not finding himself favoured with an immediate
reply to his inquiry, repeated it.

"Who did this? Did you do this?" And he gave Charlie Griffin a shake
which made him feel as though he were being shaken not only upside
down, but inside out.

"No-o-o!" said Charlie, as loudly as he was able with Mr. Stephen
Huffman shaking him as a terrier shakes a rat. "I-I-I didn't!
Le-e-eave me alone!"

"I'll leave you alone fast enough! I'll leave the lot of you alone
when I've taken all the skin off your bodies! Did you do this?" And
Mr. Stephen Huffham transferred his attention to Bailey.

"No!" roared Bertie, before Huffman had time to get him fairly in his
grasp. Mr. Huffman held him at arm's length, and looked him full in
the face with an intensity of scrutiny which Bertie by no means
relished.

"I suppose none of you did do it; nobody ever does do these sort of
things, so far as I can make out. It was accidental; it always is."

His voice had been so far, if not conciliatory, at least not unduly
elevated. But suddenly he turned upon Ellis with a roar which was not
unlike the bellow of a bull. "Did you do it?"

Ellis started as though he had received an electric shock.

"No-o!" he gasped. "It was Wheeler!"

"Oh, it was Wheeler, was it?"

"It wasn't me," said Wheeler.

"Oh, it wasn't you? Who was it, then? That's what I want to know; who
was it, then?" Mr. Huffham put this question in a tone of voice which
would have been eminently useful had he been addressing some person a
couple of miles away, but which in his present situation almost made
the panes of glass rattle in the windows. "Who was it, then?" And he
caught hold of Ellis and shook him with such velocity to and fro that
it was difficult for a moment to distinguish what it was that he was
shaking.

"It--was--Whe-e-eler!" gasped Ellis, struggling with his breath.

"Now, just you listen to me, you boys!" began Mr. Huffham. (They could
scarcely avoid listening to him, considering that he spoke in what was
many degrees above a whisper.) "I'll put it this way, so that we can
have things fair and square, and know what we're a-doing of. There's a
pound's damage been done here, so perhaps one of you gentlemen will
let me have a sovereign. I'm not going to ask who did it; I'm not
going to ask no questions at all: all I says is, perhaps one of you
young gentlemen will let me have a sovereign." He stretched out his
hand as though he expected to receive a sovereign then and there; as
it happened he stretched it out in the direction of Bertie Bailey.

Bertie looked at the horny, dirt-grimed palm, then up in Mr. Huffham's
face. A dog-fancier would have said that there was some scarcely
definable resemblance to the bull-dog in the expression of his eyes.
"You won't get a sovereign out of me," he said.

"Oh, won't I? we'll see!"

"We will see. I'd nothing to do with it; I don't know who did do it.
You shouldn't leave the place without a light; who's to see in the
dark?"

"You let me finish what I've got to say, then you say your say out
afterwards. What I say is this--there's a pound's worth of damage
done----"

"There isn't a pound's worth of damage done," said Bertie.

Mr. Huffham caught him by the shoulder. "You let me finish out my say!
I say there is a pound's worth of damage done; you can settle who it
was among you afterwards; and what I say is this, either you pays me
that pound before you leave this shop or I'll give the whole four of
you such a flogging as you never had in all your days--I'll skin you
alive!"

"It won't give me my money your flogging them," wailed Mrs. Huffham
from behind the counter. "It's my money I wants! Here is all them
bottles broken, and the case smashed--and it cost me two pound ten,
and everything inside of it's a-ruined. It's my money I wants!"

"It's what I wants too; so which of you young gents is going to hand
over that there sovereign?"

"Wheeler's got sevenpence," suggested Griffin.

"Sevenpence! what's sevenpence? It's a pound I want! Which of you is
going to fork up that there pound?"

"There isn't a pound's worth of damage done," said Bertie; "nothing
like. If you let us go, we'll get five shillings somehow, and bring it
you in a week."

"In a week--five shillings! you catch me at it! Why, if I was once to
let you outside that door, you'd put your fingers to your noses, and
you'd call out, 'There goes old Huffham! yah--h--h!'" And he gave a
very fair imitation of the greeting which the sight of him was apt to
call forth from the very youths in front of him.

"If they was the young gentlemen they calls themselves they'd pay up,
and not try to rob an old woman what's over seventy year."

"Now then, what's it going to be, your money or your life? That's the
way to put it, because I'll only just let you off with your life, I'll
tell you. Look sharp; I want my tea! What's it going to be, your
money, or rather, my old grandmother's money over there, an old
woman who finds it a pretty tight fit to keep herself out of the
workhouse----"

"Yes, that she do," interpolated the grandmother in question.

"Or your life?" He looked in turn from one boy to the other, and
finally his gaze rested on Bailey.

Bertie met his eyes with a sullen stare. "I tell you I'd nothing to do
with it," he said.

"And I tell you I don't care that who had to do with it," and Mr.
Huffham snapped his fingers. "You're that there pack of liars I
wouldn't believe you on your oath before a judge and jury, not that I
wouldn't!" and his fingers were snapped again. He and Bailey stood for
a moment looking into each other's face.

"If you hit me for what I didn't do, I'll do something worth hitting
for."

"Will you?" Mr. Huffham caught him by the shoulder, and held him as in
a vice.

"Don't you hit me!"

Apparently Mrs. Huffham was impressed by something in his manner.
"Don't you hit 'un hard! now don't you!"

"Won't I? I'll hit him so hard, I'll about do for him, that's about as
hard as I'll hit him." A look came into Mr. Huffham's face which was
not nice to see. Bailey never flinched; his hard-set jaw and sullen
eyes made the resemblance to the bulldog more vivid still. "You pay me
that pound!"

"I wouldn't if I had it!"

In an instant Mr. Huffham had swung him round, and was raining blows
with his clenched fist upon the boy's back and shoulders. But he had
reckoned without his host, if he had supposed the punishment would be
taken quietly. The boy fought like a cat, and struggled and kicked
with such unlooked-for vigour that Mr. Huffham, driven against the
counter and not seeing what he was doing, struck out wildly, knocked
the lamp off its nail with his fist, and in an instant the boy and the
man were struggling in the darkness on the floor.

Just then a stentorian voice shouted through the glass window of the
rickety door,--

"Bravo! that's the best plucked boy I've seen!"

                              Chapter IV

                            A LITTLE DRIVE

Those within the shop had been too much interested in their own
proceedings to be conscious of a dog-cart, which came tearing through
the darkening shadows at such a pace that startled pedestrians might
be excused for thinking that it was a case of a horse running away
with its driver. But such would have been convinced of their error
when, in passing Mrs. Huffham's, on hearing Mr. Stephen bellowing with
what seemed to be the full force of a pair of powerful lungs, the
vehicle was brought to a standstill as suddenly as a regiment of
soldiers halt at the word of command. The driver spoke to the horse,--

"Steady! stand still, old girl!" The speaker alighted. Approaching
Mrs. Huffham's, he stood at the glass-windowed door, observing the
proceedings within; and when Mr. Stephen, in his blind rage, struck
the lamp from its place and plunged the scene in darkness, the
unnoticed looker-on turned the handle of the door and entered the
shop, shouting, in tones which made themselves audible above the
din,--

"Bravo! that's the best plucked boy I've seen!" And standing on the
threshold, he repeated his assertion, "Bravo! that's the best plucked
boy I've seen." He drew a box of matches from his pocket, and striking
one, he held the flickering flame above his head, so that some little
light was shed upon what was going on within. "What's this little
argument?" he asked.

Seeing that Mr. Huffman was still holding Bailey firmly in his grasp,
"Hold hard, big one," he said; "let the little chap get up. You ought
to have your little arguments outside; this place isn't above half
large enough to swing a cat in. Granny, bring a light!"

As the match was just on the point of going out he struck another, and
entered the shop with it flaming in his hand. Mrs. Huffham's nerves
were too shaken to allow her to pay that instant attention to the
new-comer's orders which he seemed to demand.

"Look alive, old lady; bring a light! This old band-box is as dark as
pitch."

Thus urged, the old lady disappeared, presently reappearing with a
little table-lamp in her trembling hands.

"Put it somewhere out of reach--if anything is out of reach in this
dog-hole of a place. I shouldn't be surprised if you had a little
bonfire with the next lamp that's upset."

Mrs. Huffman placed it on a shelf in the extreme corner of the shop,
from which post of vantage it did not light the scene quite so
brilliantly as it might have done. Mr. Stephen and the boy, relaxing a
moment from the extreme vigour of discussion, availed themselves of
the opportunity to see what sort of person the stranger might chance
to be.

He was a man of gigantic stature, probably considerably over six feet
high, but so broad in proportion that he seemed shorter than he
actually was. A long waterproof, from which the rain was trickling in
little streams, reached to his feet; the hood was drawn over his head,
and under its shadow was seen a face which was excellently adapted to
the enormous frame. A huge black beard streamed over the stranger's
breast, and a pair of large black eyes looked out from overhanging
brows. He was the first to break the silence.

"Well, what is this little argument?" Then, without waiting for an
answer, he continued, addressing Mr. Huffham, "You're rather a large
size, don't you think, for that sized boy?"

"Who are you? and what do you want? If there's anything you want to
buy, perhaps you'll buy it, and take yourself outside."

The stranger put his hand up to his beard, and began pulling it.

"There's nothing I want to buy, not just now." He looked at Bailey.
"What's he laying it on for?"

"Nothing."

"That's not bad, considering. What were you laying it on for?" This to
Huffham.

"I've not finished yet, not by no manner of means; I mean to take
it out of all the lot of 'em. Call themselves gents! Why, if a
working-man's son was to behave as they does, he'd get five years
at a reformatory. I've known it done before today."

"I daresay you have; you look like a man who knew a thing or two. What
were you laying it on for?"

"What for? why, look here!" And Mr. Huffham pointed to the broken
bottles and the damaged case.

"And I'm a hard-working woman, I am, sir, and I'm seventy-three this
next July; and it's hard work I find it to pay my rent: and wherever
I'm to get the money for them there things, goodness knows, I don't.
It'll be the workhouse, after all!" Thus Mrs. Huffham lifted up her
voice and wept.

"And they calls themselves gents, and they comes in here, and takes
advantage of an old woman, and robs her right and left, and thinks
they're going to get off scot free; not if I know it this time they
won't." Mr. Stephen Huffham looked as though he meant it, every word.

"Did you do that?" asked the stranger of Bailey.

"No, I didn't."

"I don't care who did it; they're that there liars I wouldn't believe
a word of theirs on oath; they did it between them, and that's quite
enough for me."

"I suppose one of you did do it?" asked the stranger.

Bailey thrust his hands in his pockets, looking up at the stranger
with the dogged look in his eyes.

"The place was pitch dark; why didn't they have a light in the place?"

"Because there didn't happen to be a light in the place, is that any
reason why you should go smashing everything you could lay your hands
on? Why couldn't you wait for a light? Go on with you! I'll take the
skin off your back!"

"How much?" asked the stranger, paying no attention to Mr. Stephen's
eloquence.

"There's a heap of mischief done, heap of mischief!" wailed the old
lady in the rear.

"How am I to tell all the mischief that's been done? Just look at the
place; a sovereign wouldn't cover it, no, that it wouldn't."

"There isn't five shillings' worth of harm," said Bertie. "If you were
to get five shillings, you'd make a profit of half a crown."

The stranger laughed, and Mr. Huffham scowled; the look which he cast
at Bertie was not exactly a look of love, but the boy met it without
any sign of flinching.

"I'll be even with you yet, my lad!" Mr. Stephen said.

"If I give you a sovereign you will be even," suggested the stranger.

Mr. Stephen's eyes glistened; and his grandmother, clasping her old
withered palms together, cast a look of rapture towards the ceiling.

"Oh, deary me! deary me!" she said.

"It's a swindle," muttered Bertie.

"Oh, it's a swindle, is it?" snarled Mr. Stephen. "I'd like to swindle
you, my fighting cock."

"You couldn't do it," retorted Bertie.

The stranger laughed again. Unbuttoning his waterproof, and in doing
so distributing a shower of water in his immediate neighbourhood, out
of his trousers pocket he took a heavy purse, out of the purse he took
a sovereign, and the sovereign he handed to Mr. Stephen Huffham. Mr.
Stephen's palm closed on the glittering coin with a certain degree of
hesitation.

"Now you're quits," said the stranger, "you and the boy."

"Quits!" said Bertie, "it's seventeen-and-sixpence in his pocket!"

Mr. Stephen smiled, not quite pleasantly; he might have been moved to
speech had not the stranger interrupted him.

"You're pretty large, and that's all you are; if this boy were about
your size, he'd lay it on to you. I should say you were a considerable
fine sample of a--coward."

Mr. Stephen held his peace. There was something in the stranger's
manner and appearance which induced him to think that perhaps he had
better be content with what he had received. After having paused for a
second or two, seemingly for some sort of reply from Mr. Huffham, the
stranger addressed the boys.

"Get out!" They went out, rather with the air of beaten curs. The
stranger followed them. "Get up into the cart; I'm going to take you
home to my house to tea." They looked at each other, in doubt as to
whether he was jesting. "Do you hear? Get up into the cart! You, boy,"
touching Bailey on the shoulder, "you ride alongside me."

Still they hesitated. It occurred to them that they had already broken
their engagement with the credulous Mr. Shane, broken it in the most
satisfactory manner, in each separate particular. They were not only
wet and muddy, looking somewhat as though they had recently been
picked out of the gutter, but that half-hour within which they had
pledged themselves to return had long since gone. But if they
hesitated, there was no trace of hesitation about the stranger.

"Now then, do you think I want to wait here all night? Tumble up, you
boy." And fairly lifting Wheeler off his legs, he bore him bodily
through the air, and planted him at the back of the trap. And not
Wheeler only, but Griffin and Ellis too. Before those young gentlemen
had quite realized their position, or the proposal he had made to
them, they found themselves clinging to each other to prevent
themselves tumbling out of the back of what was not a very large
dog-cart. "You're none of you big ones! Catch hold of each other's
hair or something, and don't fall out; I can't stop to pick up boys.
Now then, bantam, up you go."

And Bertie, handled in the same undignified fashion, found himself on
the front seat beside the driver. The stranger, big though he was,
apparently allowed his size to interfere in no degree with his
agility. In a twinkling he was seated in his place by Bertie.

"Steady!" he cried. "Look out, you boys!" He caught the reins in his
hands; the mare knew her master's touch, and in an instant, even
before the boys had altogether yet quite realized their situation,
they were dashing through the darkening night.

It was about as cheerless an evening as one could very well select for
a drive in an open vehicle. The stranger, enveloped in his waterproof,
his hood in some degree sheltering his face, a waterproof rug drawn
high above his knees, was more comfortable than the boys. Bailey,
indeed, had a seat to sit upon and a share of the rug, but his friends
had neither seat nor shelter.

Perhaps, on the whole, they would have been better off had they been
walking. The imperfect light and the hasty start rendered it difficult
for them to have a clear view of their position. The mare--which, had
it been lighter and they versed in horseflesh, they would have been
able to recognise as a very tolerable specimen of an American
trotter--made the pace so hot that they had to cling, if not to each
other's hair, at least to whatever portion of each other's person they
could manage to get hold of. Even then it was only by means of a
series of gymnastic feats that they were able to keep their footing
and save themselves from being pitched out on to the road.

They had not gone far when Griffin had a disaster.

"I've lost my hat!" he cried. Wind and pace and nervousness combined
had loosened his headgear, and without staying to bid farewell to his
head, it disappeared into the night.

The stranger gave utterance to a loud yet musical laugh.

"Never mind your hat! Can't stop for hats! The fresh air will do you
good, cool your head, my boy!" But this was a point of view which did
not occur to Griffin; he was rather disposed to wonder what Mr. Shane
and Mrs. Fletcher would say.

"I wish you wouldn't catch hold of my throat; you'll strangle me,"
said Wheeler, as the vehicle dashed round a sharp turn in the road,
and the hatless Griffin made a frantic clutch at his friend to save
himself from following his hat.

"I--can't--help--it," gasped his friend in reply. "I wish he wouldn't
go so fast. Oh--h!"

The stranger laughed again.

"Don't tumble out! we can't stop to pick up boys! Hullo! what are you
up to there?"

The trio in the rear were apparently engaged in a fight for life. They
were uttering choking ejaculations, and struggling with each other in
their desperate efforts to preserve their perpendicular. In the course
of their struggle they lurched against the stranger with such
unexpected violence that had he not with marvellous rapidity twisted
round in his seat and caught them with his arm, they would in all
probability have continued their journey on the road. At the same
instant, with his disengaged hand he brought the horse, who seemed to
obey the directions of its master's hand with mechanical accuracy, to
a sudden halt.

"Now, then, are you all right?"

They were very far from being all right, but were not at that moment
possessed of breath to tell him so. Had they not lost the power of
speech they would have joined in a unanimous appeal to him to set them
down, and let them go anywhere, and do anything, rather than allow
them to continue any longer at the mercy of his too rapid steed. But
the stranger seemed to take their involuntary silence for
acquiescence. Once more they were dashing through the night, and again
they were hanging on for their bare lives.

"Like driving, youngster?" The question was addressed to Bailey. "Like
horses? Like a beast that can go? Mary Anne can give a lead to a flash
of lightning and catch it in two T's."

"Mary Anne" was apparently the steed. At that moment the trio in the
rear would have believed anything of Mary Anne's powers of speed, but
Bailey held his peace. The stranger went on.

"I like a drive on a night like this. I like dashing through the wind
and the darkness and the rain. I like a thing to fire my blood, and
that's the reason why I like you. That's the reason why I've asked you
home to tea. What's your name?"

"Bailey, sir."

"I knew a man named Bailey down in Kentucky who was hanged because he
was too fond of horses--other people's, not his own. Any relation of
yours?" Bertie disclaimed the soft impeachment.

"I don't think so, sir."

"There's no knowing. Lots of people are hanged without their
own mothers knowing anything about it, let alone their fathers,
especially out Kentucky way. A cousin of mine was hanged in Golden
City, and I shouldn't have known anything about it to this day if
I hadn't come along and seen his body swinging on a tree. As nice
a fellow as man need know, six-feet-one-and-three-quarters in his
stockings--three-quarters of an inch shorter than me. They explained
to me that they'd hanged him by mistake, which was some consolation
to me, anyway, though what he thought of it is more than I can say. I
cut him down, dug a hole seven foot deep, and laid him there to
sleep; and there he sleeps as sound as though he'd handed in his
checks upon a feather bed."

Bailey looked up at the speaker. He was not quite sure if he was in
earnest, and was anything but sure that the little narrative which he
rolled so glibly off his tongue might not be the instant coinage of
his brain. But something in the speaker's voice and manner attracted
him even more than his words; something he would have found it
difficult to describe.

"Is that true?" he asked.

The stranger looked down at him and laughed.

"Perhaps it is, and perhaps it isn't." He laughed again. "Wet,
youngster?"

"I should rather think I am," was Bertie's grim response. All the
stranger did was to laugh again. Bailey ventured on an inquiry. "Do
you live far from here?" He was conscious of a certain degree of
interest as to whether the stranger was driving them to Kentucky; he,
too, had Mr. Shane and Mrs. Fletcher in his mind's eye. "Shane'll get
sacked for this, as sure as fate," was his mental observation. He was
aware that at Mecklemburg House the sins of the pupils not seldom fell
upon the heads of the assistant-masters.

"Pain's Hill," was the answer to his question. "Ever heard of
Washington Villa?" Bertie could not say he had.

"I am George Washington Bankes, the proprietor thereof. Yes, and it
isn't so long ago that if any one had said to me that I should settle
down as a country gentleman, I should have said, 'There have been
liars since Ananias, but none quite as big as you.'"

Bailey eyed him from a corner of his eye. His father was a medical
man, with no inconsiderable country practice. He had seen something of
country gentlemen, but it occurred to him that a country gentleman in
any way resembling his new acquaintance he had not yet chanced to see.

"You at the school there?"

Taking it for granted that he referred to Mecklemburg House, Bertie
confessed that he was.

"Why don't you run away? I would."

Bertie started; he had read of boys running away from school in
stories of the penny dreadful type, but he had not yet heard of
country gentlemen suggesting that course of action as a reasonable one
for the rising generation to pursue.

"Every boy worth his salt ought to run away. I did, and I've never
done a more sensible thing to this day." In that case one could not
but wonder for how many sensible things Mr. George Washington Bankes
had been remarkable in the course of his career. "I've been from China
to Peru, from the North Pole to the South. I've been round the world
all sorts of ways; and the chances are that if I hadn't run away from
school I should never have travelled twenty miles from my old mother's
door. Why don't you run away?"

Bertie wriggled in his seat and gasped.

"I--I don't know," he said.

"Ah, I'll talk to you about that when I get you home. You're about the
best plucked lad I've seen, or you wouldn't have stood up in the way
you did to that great hulking lubber there; and rather than see a lad
of parts wasting his time at school--but you wait a bit. I'll open
your eyes, my lad. I'll give you some idea of what a man's life ought
to be! Books never did me any good, and never will. I say, throw
books, like physic, to the dogs--a life of adventure's the life for
me!"

Bertie listened open-eyed and open-mouthed; he began to think he was
in a waking dream. There was a wildness about his new acquaintance,
and about his mode of speech, which filled him with a sort of dull,
startled wonder. There was in the boy, deep-rooted somewhere, that
half-unconscious longing for things adventurous which the British
youngster always has. Mr. Bankes struck a chord which filled the boy
almost with a sense of pain.

"A life of adventure's the life for me!" Mr. Bankes repeated his
confession of faith, laughing as he did so; and the words, and the
voice, and the manner, and the laugh, all mixed together, made the
boy, wet as he was, glow with a sudden warmth. "A life of adventure's
the life for me!"

The drive was nearly ended, and during the rest of it Mr. Bankes kept
silence. Wheeler's hat had followed Griffin's, but he had not
mentioned it; partly because, as he thought, he would receive no
sympathy and not much attention, and partly because, in his anxiety to
keep his footing in the trap, and get out of it with his bones whole,
it would have been a matter of comparative indifference to him if the
rest of his clothing had followed his hat. But he, too, mistily
wondered what Mr. Shane and Mrs. Fletcher would say.

Fortunately for his peace of mind, and the peace of mind of his two
friends, the good steed, Mary Anne, brought them safely to the doors
of Washington Villa. Fond of driving as they were, as a rule, they
were conscious of a distinct sense of relief when that drive was at an
end.

                              Chapter V

                    AN EVENING AT WASHINGTON VILLA

Washington Villa appeared, from what one could see in the darkness, to
be a fairly sized house, standing in its own grounds. Considerable
stabling was built apart from, but close to the house, and as the trap
dashed along the little carriage-drive numerous loud-voiced dogs
announced the fact of an arrival to whomever it might concern. The
instant the vehicle stopped, the hall door was opened, and a little
wizened, shrunken man came down the steps. Mr. Bankes threw him the
reins.

"Jump out, you boys, and tumble into the house. Welcome to Washington
Villa." Suiting the action to the word, and before his young friends
had clearly realized the fact of their having arrived at their
destination, he had risen from his seat, sprung to the ground, and was
standing on the threshold of the door. The boys were not long in
following suit.

"Come this way!" Striding on in front of them, through a hall of no
inconsiderable dimensions, he led them into a room in which a bright
fire was blazing, and which was warm with light. A pretty servant girl
made a simultaneous entrance through a door on the other side of the
room. "Catch hold." Tearing rather than taking off his waterproof and
hood, he flung them to the maid. "Where are my slippers?" The maid
produced a pair from the fender, where they had been placed to warm;
and Mr. Bankes thrust his feet into them, flinging his boots off on to
the floor. "Tea for five, and a good tea, too, and in about less time
than it would take me to shoot a snake."

The maid disappeared with a laugh on her face; she was apparently used
to Mr. Bankes, and to Mr. Bankes' mode of speech. Then, after having
attended to his own comfort, the host turned his attention to his
guests.

"Well, you're a nice lot of half-drowned puppies. By right, I ought to
hang you up in front of the kitchen fire to dry."

His guests shuffled about upon their feet with not quite a graceful
air. It was true that they looked in about as miserable a condition as
they very well could do; but considering the circumstances under which
they had travelled, it was scarcely to be wondered at. Had Mr. Bankes
travelled in their place, he might have looked like a half-drowned
puppy too.

"But a wetting will do you good, and as for mud, why, I don't care for
mud. I've swallowed too much of it in my time to stick at a trifle.
When I was a boy, I was the dirtiest little blackguard ever seen. Now,
then, is that tea ready? Come along."

And off he strode into the hall, the boys following sheepishly in the
rear. Wheeler poked Bailey in the side with his elbow, and Bailey
poked Griffin, and they each of them poked the other, and they
grinned. Their feelings were altogether too much for speech. What Mr.
Shane and Mrs. Fletcher would think and say--but that was a matter on
which they would not improbably be able to speak more fully later on.
A more unguestlike-looking set of guests could hardly be conceived.
Not only were their boots concealed beneath thick layers of mud, but
they were spattered with mud from head to foot; their hands and faces
were filthy, and their hair was in a state of untidiness better
imagined than described. They had their everyday clothes on; their
trousers were in general too short in the leg, and their coats too
short in the sleeves; while Griffin was radiant with a mighty patch in
the seat of his breeches of a totally different material to the
original cloth. It was fortunate that Mr. Bankes did not stick at
trifles, or he would never have allowed his newly-discovered guests to
enter his well-kept residence.

They followed their host into a room on the other side of the hall,
and the sight they saw almost took their breath away. A table laden
with more delicacies than they remembered to have seen crowded
together for a considerable space of time was, especially after the
fare to which they were accustomed at Mecklemburg House, a spectacle
calculated at any time to fill them with a satisfaction almost
amounting to awe. But to come out of such a night to such a prospect!
To come to feast from worse than famine! The revulsion of feeling was
considerable, and the aspect of the guests became even more sheepish
than before.

"Sit down, and pitch in. If you're as hungry as I am, you'll eat the
table, legs and all."

The boys needed no second invitation. In a very short space of
time host and guests alike were doing prodigies of execution. The
nimble-handed servant-maid found it as much as she could do to supply
their wants. On the details of the feast we need not dwell. It partook
of the nature of a joke to call that elaborate meal tea. By the time
it was finished the four young gentlemen had not only ceased to think
of what Mrs. Fletcher and Mr. Shane might say, but they had altogether
forgotten the existence of Mecklemburg House Collegiate School; and
even Charlie Griffin was prepared to declare that he had thoroughly
enjoyed that nightmare journey from Mrs. Huffham's to the present
abode of bliss. The meal had been no less to the satisfaction of the
host than of his guests.

"Done?" They signified by their eloquent looks as much as by their
speech that they emphatically had. "Then let's go back to the other
room." And they went.

A peculiarity of this other room was that all the chairs in it
were arm-chairs; and in four of not the least comfortable of these
arm-chairs the boys found themselves seated at their ease. Over the
fire-place, arranged in the fashion of a trophy, were a large number
of venerable-looking pipes. Taking one of these down, Mr. Bankes
proceeded to fill it from a tobacco jar which stood in a corner of the
mantelshelf. Then he lit it, and, planting himself in the centre of
the hearthrug, right in front of the fire, he thrust his hands into
his pockets and looked down upon his guests, a huge, black-bearded
giant, puffing at his pipe.

"Had a good feed?"

They signified that they had.

"Do you know what I brought you here for?"

The food and the warmth combined had brought them into a state of
exceeding peace, and they were inclined to sleep. Why he had brought
them there they neither knew nor cared; they were beyond such
trifling. They had had a good meal, the first for many days, and it
behoved them to be thankful.

"I'll tell you. I brought you here because I want to get you, the
whole lot of you, to run away."

His listeners opened their eyes and ears. Bailey had made some
acquaintance with his host's character before, but his three friends
stared.

"Every boy worth his salt runs away from school. I did, and it was the
most sensible thing I ever did in my life."

When Mr. Bankes thus repeated the assertion which he had made to
Bailey in the trap, his hearers banished sleep and began to wonder.

"What's the use of school? What do you do there? What do you do at
that tumble-down old red-brick house on the Cobham road? Why, you
waste your time."

This assertion, if, to a certain extent, true, as it applied to the
establishment in question, was a random shot as applied to schools in
general.

"Shall I tell you what I learnt at school? I learnt to hate it, and I
haven't forgotten that lesson to this day; no, and I shan't till I'm
packed away with a lot of dirt on top of me. My father," Mr. Bankes
took his pipe out of his mouth, and pointed his remarks with it as he
went on, "died of a broken heart, and so should I have done if I
hadn't cut it short and run away."

No man ever looked less like dying of a broken heart than Mr. Bankes
did then.

"A life of adventure's the life for me!"

They were the words which had thrilled through Bertie when he had
heard them in the trap; they thrilled him again as he heard them now,
and they thrilled his companions too. They stared up at Mr. Bankes as
though he held them with a spell; nor would that gentleman have made a
bad study for a wizard.

"A life of adventure's the life for me! Under foreign skies in distant
lands, away from the twopenny-halfpenny twaddle of spelling-books and
sums, seeking fortune and finding it, a man in the midst of men, not a
finicking idiot among a pack of babies. Why don't you run away? You
see me? I was at school at Nottingham; I was just turned thirteen: I
ran away with ninepence-halfpenny in my pocket. I got to London
somehow; and from London I got abroad, somehow too; and abroad I've
picked up fortune after fortune, thrown them all away, and picked them
up again. Now I've had about enough of it, I've made another little
pile, and this little pile I think I'll keep, at least just yet
awhile. But what a life it's been! What larks I've had, what days and
nights, what months and years! Why, when I think of all I've done, and
of what I might have done, rotted away my life, if it hadn't been for
that little bolt from school,--why, when I think of that, I never see
a boy but I long to take him by the scruff of the neck, and sing out,
'Youngster, why don't you do as I have done, cut away from school, and
run?'"

Mr. Bankes flung back his head and laughed. But whether he was
laughing at them, or at his own words, or at his recollections of the
past, was more than they could say. They looked at each other,
conscious that their host was not the least part of the afternoon's
entertainment, and somewhat at a loss as to whether he was drawing the
long bow, taking them to be younger and more verdant than they were,
or whether he was seriously advancing an educational system of his
own.

He startled them by putting a question point-blank to Bailey, one
which he had put before.

"Why don't you run away?"

"I--I don't know!" stammered Bertie. Then, frankly, as the idea
occurred to him, "Because I never thought of it."

Mr. Bankes laughed. His constant tendency to laughter, with or without
apparent reason, seemed to be his not least remarkable characteristic.

"Now you have thought of it, why don't you run away?"

Bailey turned the matter over in his mind.

"Why should I?"

His friends looked at each other, thinking the conversation just a
trifle queer.

"Why ever should he run away?" asked Griffin.

"And wherever would he run to?" added Wheeler.

Dick Ellis said nothing, but possibly he thought the more. Mr. Bankes
directed his reply directly at Bailey.

"I'll tell you why you ought to run away; because that's the shortest
cut into a world into which you will never get by any other road. I'll
tell you where you ought to run to, out of this little fleabite of an
island, into the lands of golden dreams and golden possibilities, my
lad; where men at night lay themselves down poor, and in the morning
rise up rich."

Mr. Bankes, warming with his theme, began to gesticulate and stamp
about the room, the boys following him with all their eyes.

"I hate your huggermuggering existence; why should a lad of parts
huggermugger all his life away? When I saw you stand up to that great
lout, I said to myself, 'That lad has grit; he's just the very spit of
what I was when I was just his age; he's too good to be left to muddle
in this old worn-out country, to waste his time with books and sums
and trash.' I said to myself, 'I'll lend him a helping hand,' and so I
will. I'll show you the road, if I do nothing else; and if you don't
choose to take it, it's yourself's to blame, not me.

"When I was out in Colorado, at Denver City, there was a boy came
along, just about your age; he came along from away down East. He was
English; he'd got himself stowed away, and he'd made his way to the
promised land. He took a spade one day, and he marked out a claim, and
that boy he worked it, he did, and it turned up trumps; there wasn't
any dirt to dig, because pretty nearly all that his spade turned up
was virgin silver. He sold that claim for 10,000 dollars, money down,
and he went on and prospered. That boy is now a man; he owns, I
daresay, half a dozen silver mines, and he's so rich,--ah, he's so
rich he doesn't know how rich he is. Now why shouldn't you have been
that boy?"

Mr. Bankes paused for a reply, but his listeners furnished none.
Griffin was on the point of suggesting that Bailey was not that boy
because he wasn't; but he refrained, thinking that perhaps that was
not quite the sort of answer that was wanted.

"I knew another boy when I was going up from the coast to Kimberley,
Griqualand West. Do you boys know where that is?"

This sudden plunge into geographical examination took his guests
aback; they did not know where Griqualand West was; perhaps they had
been equally misty as to the whereabouts of Denver City, Colorado.

"It's in South Africa. Ah, that's the way to learn geography, to
travel about and see the places,--pitch your books into the fire!"

"And is the other place in South Africa?" queried Griffin.

Mr. Bankes gave him a look the like of which he had never received
from Mr. Fletcher; a look of thunder, as though he would have liked to
pick him up, then and there, and pitch him after the books into the
fire.

"Denver City, Colorado, in South Africa?" he roared. "Why, you
leather-headed noodle, where were you at school? If I were the man who
taught you, I'd flog you from here to Dublin with a cat-o'-nine-tails,
rather than I'd let you expose your ignorance like that!"

The sudden advent among them of an explosive bomb might have created a
little more astonishment than this speech, but not much. Griffin felt
that he had better abstain from questioning, and let his host run on.

"Denver City is in the United States of America, in the land of the
stars and bars, as every idiot knows! As I was saying, before that
young gentleman wrote himself down donkey--and he looks it, every inch
of him!--as I was saying, when I was going up from the coast to
Kimberley, there was a boy who used to do odd jobs for me; he hadn't
sixpenny-worth of clothes upon his back! I lost sight of him; five
years afterwards I met him again. It was like a tale out of the
_Arabian Nights_, I tell you! That ragged boy that was, when I saw him
again five years afterwards, he reckoned to cover what any half-dozen
men might have put down, and double it afterwards. And look at the
life he'd led! It's no good my talking about it here, you'd hardly
believe me if I told you half the things he'd done. Don't you believe
any of your adventure books. There aren't half the adventures crowded
into any book which that lad had seen. Yes, a life of adventure was
the life for him, and he'd had it, too!"

Mr. Bankes returned to his post of vantage in front of the fire. In
his excitement he had smoked his pipe to premature ashes; he refilled
and lighted it. Then he addressed himself to Bailey, marking time as
he went on by beating the palm of his right hand against his left.

"I say, don't let a day be wasted--days lost are not recovered; now's
your time, and now's your opportunity; don't let the week's end find
you huggermuggering in that old school. Go out into the world! learn
to be a man! Try your courage! Put your powers to the test! Search for
the golden land! Let a life of adventure be the life for you! As for
you," Mr. Bankes turned with ominous suddenness towards Charlie
Griffin, "I don't say that to you; what I say to you is this: write
home to your mother for a good supply of flannel petticoats, and wrap
yourself up warm, and let your hair grow long, and take care of your
complexion. You're a beauty boy, one of the sort who didn't ought to
be trusted out after dark alone, and who's sure to have a fit if he
sees the moon!"

It is a question if this sudden change of subject made Griffin or his
friends the more uncomfortable. Thinking that Mr. Bankes intended a
joke, and that it would be ungrateful not to laugh, Ellis attempted a
snigger; but a sudden gleam from his host's eyes in his direction
brought his mirth to an untimely ending.

"What are you laughing at?" asked Mr. Bankes. Ellis kept silence,
being most unwilling to confess that he did not know. Mr. Bankes
addressed himself again to Bailey.

"It is you I am advising to do as I did, to try a fall with the world
and to back yourself to win, not such things as those."

Under this heading he included Bertie's three friends, with an
eloquent wave of his hand in their direction.

"It wants a boy to make a man, not a farthing sugar stick! You'll have
cause to bless this evening all your life, and to bless me, too, if
you take the tip I've given you. Don't you listen to those who talk to
you about the hardships you will meet. What's life without hardships,
I should like to know; it's hardships make the man! I'm not advising
you to wrap yourself up in cotton-wool; leave cotton-wool to
mutton-headed dummies;" this with a significant glance in the
direction of Bailey's friends. "Rather I tell you this, you back
yourself to fight, and fight it out, and fight to win, and win you
will! Run away to-night, to-morrow, I don't care when, so long as
it's within the week. There's nothing like striking the iron while
it's hot, and set the clock a-going which will never stop until it
strikes the hour of victory won and fortune made! A life of
adventure's the life for me, and it's the life for you, and the sooner
you begin it the longer it will last and the sweeter it will be."

There was something in Mr. Bankes' tone and manner, when he chose to
put it there, which, in the eyes of his present audience, at any rate,
had all the effect of natural eloquence. His excitement excited them,
and almost he persuaded them to believe in the reality of his golden
dreams. Bailey, indeed, sat silent, spellbound. Mr. Bankes, by no
means a bad judge of character, had not mistaken the metal of which
the boy was made, and every stroke he struck, struck home. As was not
unnatural, Mr. Bankes' eloquence had a very much more mixed effect on
Bailey's friends. Their host gave a sudden turn to their thoughts by
taking out his watch.

"Eleven o'clock! whew-w-w!" This was a whistle. "They'll think you've
run away already! Ha! ha! ha! I'm not going to have you boys sleep
here, so the sooner you go the better. Now then, out you go!"

His guests sprang to their feet as he made a movement as though he
would turn them out with as much precipitation as he had lifted them
into the trap. And, indeed, the manner of their departure was not much
more ceremonious. Before they quite knew what was happening, he had
hustled them into the hall; the hall-door was open; they were the
other side of it, and Mr. Bankes, standing on the doorstep, was
ordering them off his premises.

"Now then, clear out of this! The dogs will be loose in half a second;
you'd better make tracks before they take it into their heads to try
their teeth upon your legs."

The door was shut, and they were left standing in the night,
endeavouring to realize whether their adventure of the night had been
actual fact, or whether they had only dreamed it.

                              Chapter VI

                              AFTERWARDS

But Wheeler's first observation brought them back to _terra firma_
with a plunge.

"It's my belief that fellow's a howling madman."

They cast a look over their shoulder to see if the fellow thus
referred to was within hearing of this courteous speech, and then,
with one accord, they made for the entrance to Washington Villa, not
pausing till they stood clear of its precincts on the road outside.

Then Wheeler made another observation.

"This is a jolly lark!"

Ellis and Griffin laughed, but Bailey held his peace. A thought struck
Griffin.

"I say, I wonder what old Mother Fletcher'll say? She'll send herself
into fits! Fancy its being eleven o'clock! Did you ever hear of such a
set-out in all your lives? And I've no more idea of where we are than
the man in the moon."

"I know," said Bailey. He began to trudge on a few feet in front of
them.

It still rained--a steady, soaking drizzle--and a haze which hung
about the air made the night darker than it need have done. Griffin
and Wheeler, minus caps, were wholly at the mercy of the weather.

"I shouldn't be surprised," muttered Griffin, "if I didn't catch a
death of cold after this."

And, indeed, such was a quite possible consummation of the evening's
pleasure. The boys trudged on, following Bailey's lead. But Wheeler's
feelings could only find relief by venting themselves in speech.

"Did you ever hear anything like that chap? I never did, never! Fancy
his going on with all that stuff about running away. I should like to
catch myself at it,--running away! He's about the biggest liar ever I
heard!"

"And didn't he snap me up!" said Griffin. "Did you ever see anything
like it? How was I to know where the beastly place was? I don't
believe there is such a place."

"He's cracked!" decided Ellis. Then, despite the rain, the young
gentleman began snapping his fingers and cutting capers in the middle
of the muddy road. "He's cracked! cracked! Oh lor', I never had such a
spree in all my life!"

Then the three young gentlemen put their hands to their sides and
roared with laughter, stamping about the road to save themselves from
choking. But Bailey trudged steadily on in front.

"And didn't he give us a blow-out!"

A shout of laughter. "Ho, ho, ho! ha, ha, ha!"

"And didn't he tell some busters!"

Another chorus, as before.

"I wonder if he ever did run away himself, as he said he did?" This
remark came from Ellis, and his friends checked their laughter to
consider it. They then for the first time discovered that Bailey was
leaving them in the rear.

"You're a nice sort of fellow," shouted Ellis after him. "Let's catch
him up! What's his little game, I wonder? Let's catch him up!"

They scampered after him along the road, soon catching him, for
Bertie, who was not hurrying himself, was only a few yards in advance.
Ellis slipped his arm through his.

"I say, Bailey, do you think he ever ran away from school himself?"

"What's it got to do with me?" was Bertie's reply.

"Whatever made him go on at you like that? He must have taken you for
a ninny to think you were going to swallow all he said! Fancy you
running away! I think I see you at it! Running away to Huffham's and
back is about your style. Why didn't you ask him for a tip? He seemed
to be so uncommon fond of you that if I'd been you I'd have asked for
one. You might have said if he made it large enough you'd run away;
and so you might have done--to old Mother Huffham's and back." And
Ellis nudged him in the side and laughed. But Bailey held his peace.

Wheeler gave the conversation a different turn.

"How are you fellows going to get in?" He referred to their effecting
an entrance into Mecklemburg House.

"Knock at the door, of course, and pull the bell, and dance a
break-down on the steps, and make a shindy generally, so as to let
'em know we've come." These suggestions came from Griffin. Wheeler
took up the parable.

"And tell old Mother Fletcher to let us have something hot for supper,
and to look alive and get it, and make it tripe and onions, with a
glass of stout to follow. I just fancy what she'd say."

"And tell her," continued Griffin, "that we've been paying a visit to
a nice, kind gentleman, who happens to be raving mad."

"And she'd be pleased to hear that he advised us all to run away, and
waste no time about it. Where did he advise us to go to? The land of
golden dreams? Oh, my crikey, don't I see her face!"

Bailey made a remark of a practical kind.

"We can get in fast enough, there are always plenty of windows open."
It is not impossible that the young gentleman had made an entrance
into Mecklemburg House by some such way before.

"It's easy enough to get in," said Ellis, "but what are we to say in
the morning? It'll take about a week to dry my things, and about a
month to get the mud off."

"I shouldn't be surprised if old Shane got sacked," chuckled Wheeler.

"It will be jolly hard lines if he does," said Ellis.

"Oh, what's the odds? he shouldn't have let us go!" Which remark of
Wheeler's was pretty good, considering the circumstances under which
Mr. Shane's permission had been obtained.

Just then Bailey stopped, and began to peer about him in the night.

"Have you lost your way?" asked Ellis. "That'll be the best joke of
all if you have. Fancy camping out a night like this! We shan't quite
be drowned by the morning, but just about almost."

"I'm going to cut across this field," said Bailey. "It's ever so far
round by the road, but we shall get there in less than no time if we
go this way."

The suggestion tickled Ellis.

"Fancy cutting across fields on a night like this! Oh, my gracious!
what will old Mother Fletcher say?"

Bailey climbed over a gate, and the others clambered after him. It
might be the shortest cut, but it was emphatically the dirtiest.

"Why, if they haven't been ploughing it!" cried Griffin, before they
had taken half a dozen steps.

Apparently they had, and very recently too. The furrows were wide and
deep, the soil seemed to be a stiffish clay; walking was exercise of
the most hazardous kind. There was an exclamation from some one; but
as it appeared that Griffin had only fallen forward on to his nose,
his friends were too much occupied with their own proceedings to pay
much heed.

"I have lost my shoe!" declared Wheeler, immediately after. "Oh, I'm
stuck in the mud; I believe I'm planted in this beastly field."

"Never mind your shoe, since you've lost your hat already," said
Ellis, with ready sympathy. "You might as well leave all the rest of
your things behind you, for all the use they'll be after this little
spree is over."

"I don't know what Bailey calls a short cut," grumbled Griffin. "At
the rate I'm going it'll take me about a couple of hours to do a
hundred yards."

"We shall be home with the milk," said Ellis.

"I've lost my other shoe!" cried Wheeler.

"No, have you really, though?"

"I believe I have, but I don't know whether I have or whether I
haven't; all I know is, I've got about a hundred pounds of mud
sticking to my feet. I wish Bailey was at Jericho with his short
cuts!"

"This is nicer than that old lunatic," sang out Dick Ellis. "Don't I
wish old Mother Fletcher could see us now."

"I don't know what you call nice," said Griffin. "You'd call it nice
if you had your eyes and nose and mouth bunged up. I'm down again!"

"You needn't pull me with you," remonstrated Ellis.

But Griffin did. Feeling that he was going, he made a frantic clutch
at Ellis, who was just in front of him, and the two friends embraced
each other on the treacherous ground. Ellis' tone underwent a sudden
change.

"I'll pay you out for this!"

"I couldn't help it," protested Griffin.

"Couldn't help it! What do you mean, you couldn't help it? Do you mean
to say you couldn't help catching hold of me, and dragging me down
into this beastly ditch?"

"It isn't a ditch; it's a furrow."

"I don't know what you call a furrow. I know I'm sopping wet, and
where my hat's gone to I don't know."

"What's it matter about your hat? I've lost mine ever so long ago! I
wish I'd stopped at home, and never bothered old Shane to let me out.
I know whoever else calls this a spree, I don't; spree indeed!"

When they had regained their feet, and were cool enough to look about
them, they found that the others were out of sight, and apparently out
of hearing too.

"Blessed if this isn't a go! If they haven't been and gone and left
us. Hollo!" Ellis put his hand to his mouth, that his voice might
carry further; but no answer came. "Ba-a-ailey! Ba-a-ailey!" But from
Bailey came no sign. "This is a pretty state of things! wherever have
they gone? If this is a game they think they're having, it's the
meanest thing of which I ever heard, and I'll be even with them, mark
my words. Which way did they go?"

"How should I know? I don't even know which way we came. How's a
fellow to know anything when he can't see his hand before his face in
a place like this? It's my belief it's one of Bailey's little games."

"Ba-a-ailey!" Ellis gave another view-halloo. In vain, only silence
answered. "Well, this is a go! If it hadn't been for you I shouldn't
have been in this hole."

"I wish I'd never bothered old Shane to let me out!"

"Bother old Shane, and bother you too! I don't know where I am any
more than Adam."

"I'm sure I don't."

"It's no good standing here like a couple of moon-struck donkeys. I
sink in the mud every time I put my foot to the ground; we shall be
over head and heels by the time the morning comes. I'm going straight
ahead; it must bring us somewhere, and it seems to me it don't much
matter where."

Minus his hat, not improved in person by his contact with the ground,
nor in temper by the desertion of his friends, Dick Ellis renewed his
journeying. Griffin found some difficulty in keeping up with him. How
many times they lost their footing during the next few minutes it
would be bootless to recount. Over mud, through mire, uphill,
downhill, they staggered wildly.

"I wonder how large this field is," observed Ellis, after about ten
minutes of this sort of work. "It seems to me we've gone about six
miles."

"It seems to me we've gone sixty," groaned his friend.

"Talk about short cuts! Fancy bringing a fellow into the middle of a
ploughed field on a pitch-dark, rainy night, and leaving him to find
his way alone! I say, Ellis, supposing we lose our way?"

"Supposing we lose our way!" shouted Dick. "I guess we've lost it!
What an ass you are! What do you think we're doing here, if we haven't
lost our way? Do you think I'd stop in a place like this if I knew a
way of getting out of it?" Just then he emphasized his remarks by
sitting down in the mud, and remaining seated where he was. "I can't
get up; I believe I'm stuck, and here I'll stick; and in the morning
they'll find me dead: you mark my words, and see if they don't."

The terror of the situation moved Griffin almost to tears.

"Let's shout," he said.

"What's the good of shouting?"

"I don't know," said Griffin.

"Then what an ass you are!" With difficulty Ellis staggered to his
feet. "It's my belief I've got about an acre of land fastened to the
seat of my breeches. I should like to know how I'm to walk and carry
that about."

They staggered on. A few yards further on they heard the sound of
wheels upon a road.

"There's the road!" cried Griffin, rapture in his voice. The sound
gave him courage. He quickened his pace, and hastened on. Suddenly
there was a splash, a cry of terror, then all was silence.

"What's the matter?" cried Ellis, startled he scarcely knew at what.
There was no reply. "Griffin, where are you? What's the matter?"

There was a sound as of a splashing of water, and a stifled voice
exclaimed,--

"Help! I am drowning! He-elp!"

Ellis pulled up short, and only just in time, for the ground seemed
all at once to come to an end. He stood on the edge of a declivity,
and in front of him was he knew not what. It was so dark, he could not
see his hand in front of him. There was only the sound as of some one
struggling in water, and faint cries for help. For an instant his legs
seemed to refuse their office, his knees gave way from under him, and
his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth. Then he became conscious of
wheels moving along a road which was close at hand. The sound gave him
courage, and he shouted with the full force of his lungs,--

"Help! help!"

To his intense satisfaction, an immediate answer was returned.

"Hollo!" a gruff voice replied; "who's that a-calling?"

"I!--here!--in the field! There's some one drowning."

"Hold hard! I'll bring you a light."

A moment's pause; then in front of him a light was seen dimly
approaching through the night. Never before had a light been so
heartily welcome to Master Richard Ellis.

"Where are you?"

"Here! Take care where you're coming; there's a pond, or something,
just in front of you."

The new-comer approached, keeping a wary eye upon the ground as he
advanced. Ellis saw it was a carter, and that he carried an
old-fashioned round lantern in his hand, with a lighted candle stuck
in the socket. The carter held the lantern above his head, standing
still, and peering through the night. The man was visible to the boy,
but the boy, shrouded in the blackness of the night, was invisible to
the man.

"Where are you?" he asked, seeing nothing in the gloom.

"Never mind me; Griffin's drowning in a pond, or something."

The splashing continued.

"I'm drowning! He-elp!"

The carter stooped forward, so that the light fell on the ground. Then
Ellis perceived that between the man and himself was a little pond,
into which the over-anxious Griffin had managed to fall.

"There ain't no water there," said the carter. "Where are you? Come
out of it. There ain't enough water to drown a cat."

Griffin, perceiving that the fact was as the carter stated, proceeded
to betake himself to what was, in comparison, dry land. But though not
drowned, a more pitiable sight could scarcely be presented. He had
fallen head-foremost into the filthy pool; the water was trickling
down his head and face, and his countenance was plastered with an
unsavoury coating of green slime.

"What are you? a boy?" inquired the carter. "Well, you're a pretty
sight, anyhow!"

For answer Griffin burst into tears. Ellis, who had by this time found
his way round the pond, joined in the criticism of his friend.

"Well, I am blessed!" In spite of his own plight, he was almost moved
to mirth. "Won't old Mother Fletcher take it out of you! I wouldn't be
in your shoes for a pound."

"Who's she? and who are you?" asked the carter.

"Have you ever heard of Mecklemburg House?"

"What, the school? Be you from the school? Well, you're a pretty
couple, the pair of you. What little game are you up to now--running
away? Won't they lay it into you!" The carter grinned; he was not
aware that corporal punishment was interdicted at Mecklemburg House,
and already seemed to see the "laying in" in his mind's eye.

"We--weren't running--away!" wept Griffin. "We've lost our way."

"Lost your way! Well, I never! That's a good one!" The carter seemed
to doubt the statement.

"We have lost our way," said Ellis.

"Look here! for a couple of pins I'll take you by the scruff of your
necks and walk you back myself, if you come any of your games on me."

From his tone and manner the carter seemed to be indignant. Griffin
stared--as well as he could through his tears and the slime--and Ellis
stared, being both at a loss to understand his indignation.

"Coming with your tales to me, telling me you've lost your way, with
the school just across the road."

His hearers stared still more.

"You don't mean it?" Ellis said. "Why, if--I don't believe--why, if
this isn't old Palmer's field, which he was only ploughing yesterday,
and if you haven't tumbled into old Palmer's pond! Well, if we aren't
a couple of beauties!"

Griffin stared at Ellis, and the carter stared at both of them. The
fact was beginning to dawn upon these young gentlemen, the startling
fact, that they had been all the time in a country with every inch of
which they were acquainted, and that it was only the darkness which
had confused them. As the carter had said, Palmer's field--which was
the name by which it was known to the boys--was right in front of
Mecklemburg House, and, in consequence, the school, instead of being,
as they supposed, a mile or so away, was just across the road. When
they had fully realized this fact, the young gentlemen gave a
simultaneous yell of satisfaction, and without wasting any time in
compliments and thanks, dashed through the open gate, and out of
sight, leaving the carter to the enjoyment of his own society.

"Well," was the comment of that worthy, when he perceived the full
measure of ingratitude which was entailed by this unlooked-for flight,
"if I ever helps another being out of a ditch I'll let him know. Not
even the price of half a pint!" Then he shouted after them, "I hope
the schoolmeaster'll tan the hide from off you. I would if I were
him."

Possibly the expression of this pious wish in some degree relieved his
feelings, for he followed the boys, though at a much more decorous
pace, through the gate. When he reached the road, he stopped for a
moment and looked around him, but there were no signs of any one in
sight--the birds had flown. So, muttering beneath his breath what were
probably not blessings, he returned to his charge, a huge vehicle,
drawn by four perspiring horses, and which was loaded with market
produce. Climbing up to his seat, he started his horses and continued
his journey through the night. But though he was not aware of it, the
young gentlemen who had treated him with such ingratitude had not come
to the end of their adventure.

The front gate of Mecklemburg House stood wide open, and they
unhesitatingly dashed inside. But no sooner were they in the
grass-grown courtyard than a thought struck Griffin.

"I wonder if Bailey and Wheeler have come back?"

"I don't know, and I don't care," said Ellis.

But the interchange of speech brought them back to the sense of their
situation.

"How are you going to get in?" asked Griffin.

"Through the schoolroom window; it's always open," replied his friend.

But this always was a rule liable to exceptions, for on this occasion
the particular window referred to happened to be shut. However, to
understand all that was to follow, it is necessary to bring this
chapter to an end.

                             Chapter VII

                     THE RETURN OF THE WANDERERS

While Bailey and his friends were spending the evening in the company
of Mr. George Washington Bankes, the principal of Mecklemburg House
was in a condition in which principals are very seldom supposed to be,
a condition very closely allied to tears.

Mr. Fletcher was a tall, thin man, whose height was altogether out of
proportion to his width. He was afflicted with a chronic stoop, and
had a way, in walking, of shuffling, rather than stepping from foot to
foot, which was scarcely dignified. His face was not unpleasing; there
was a mildness in his eye and a sweetness about his infrequent smile
which spoke of a gentler nature than the typical pedagogue is supposed
to have.

The Philistines were upon him now; the battle, which he had long been
feebly eluding, rather than boldly facing, had closed its ranks, and
in the mere preamble to the fray he had immediately succumbed. It
would have been better, perhaps, if he had been made of sterner stuff,
but, unless he could have been entirely changed into another man,
sooner or later the end was bound to come. Mr. Fletcher was ruined,
and with him Mecklemburg House Collegiate School was ruined too.

He had been on a forlorn hope to town. A certain creditor, in return
for money advanced, held a bill of sale on all the contents of the
academy. Necessary payments had not been made, and he had threatened
to swoop down upon the ancient red-brick house, and make a clearance
of every desk and stool, every pot and kettle, every bed and bolster
the premises contained. To appease this personage, Mr. Fletcher had
journeyed up to town, and had journeyed up in vain. The fiat had gone
forth that to-morrow, the day after, any day or any hour--in the
middle of the night, for all he knew--hard-hearted strangers might and
would arrive, and, without asking with your leave or by your leave,
would strip Mecklemburg House of every movable it contained.

This was what it had come to after five-and-twenty years! When his
father died he had been left a comfortable sum of ready money,
untarnished credit, and a flourishing school; of all which nothing was
left him now.

The principal and his wife were seated in their own sitting-room,
trying to look the matter boldly in the face. Mr. Fletcher, sitting
with his elbows on the table, covered his face with his hands. Mrs.
Fletcher, a hard-featured woman, had her arm about his neck, and
strove to comfort him. Her ideas of comfort were of a material sort.

"Come, eat your supper, now do. You've had nothing to eat all day, and
when you've eaten a bit things will look brighter, perhaps."

Mr. Fletcher turned his care-worn face up to his wife.

"Jane, things will never look bright to me again."

The man's voice trembled, and the woman turned her face away, perhaps
unwilling to let him see that in her eyes were tears. The principal
got up and began to walk about the room. His stoop was more pronounced
than usual, and his shuffling style of movement more ungainly.

"I'm just a failure, that's what I am, a failure. The world's moved
on, and I've stood still. I'm exactly where my father was, and in
schools and schoolmasters there's a difference of a hundred years
between his time and this. I'm not fit for keeping school in these new
times. I don't know what I am fit for. I'm fit for nothing but to
die!"

"And if you die, what's to become of me?"

"And if I live, what'll happen to you then?"

"It'll happen to me that I'll have you, and do you think that's
nothing?"

"Jane, it's worse than nothing! You ought to have been the man instead
of me. I shall be a clog to you and a burden; you're fit for fifty
things, and I'm not fit for one! I could not make a decent clerk. I'm
very certain I could not pass the examination required of a teacher in
a board-school; I doubt if I ever could have reached that standard.
I'm very certain I could not now. Times are changed in matters of
education. People used to be satisfied with a twentieth part of what
they now require. When I am turned out of the house in which I was
born, and in which I have lived my whole life long, as I shall be in
the course of a day or two, and you are turned out with me, wife,
there will be fifty openings you will be fitted to fill, while
I shall only be fit to carry circulars from house to house, or a
sandwich-board through the streets."

"It's no use talking in that way, Beauclerk; it only breaks my heart
to hear you, and it does no good. We must make up our minds to do
something at once, and the great thing is, what? Now come and eat your
supper, or you'll be ill; you know how you suffer if you go hungry to
bed."

"I may as well become accustomed to it, because I shall have to go
hungry very soon."

"Beauclerk!--what is the use of going on like that?--do you want to
break my heart?"

"Wife, I believe mine's broken."

Mr. Fletcher leaned his face against the wall just where he was
standing, his long, lean frame shaken with his sobbing.

"Beauclerk! Beauclerk! don't! don't!"

Hard-faced Mrs. Fletcher went to her husband, and took him in her
arms, and soothed him as though he were a child of five. Mr. Fletcher
looked up. His face was ghastly with the effort he made at
self-control.

"I think I will have some supper; perhaps it will do me good,"

Husband and wife sat down to supper. There were the remains of a leg
of mutton, a little glass jar half-filled with pickled cabbage, a
small piece of cheese, and bread. Mrs. Fletcher put some mutton on her
husband's plate, and a smaller portion on her own. Mr. Fletcher
swallowed one or two mouthfuls, but apparently it went against the
grain.

"I can't eat it," he said, pushing away his plate; "I'm not hungry."

"Won't you have some cheese? it's very nice cheese."

"I'm not hungry," repeated her husband.

His wife held her peace; she continued eating, not, perhaps, because
she was hungry, but possibly because she wished, in doing something,
to find a momentary relief from the necessity of thinking. Mr.
Fletcher sat drawing patterns with his fork upon the tablecloth.

"I shall write to the parents in the morning. In fact, I ought to
write to them to-night, but I don't feel up to it. I shall tell them
that I am ruined, root and branch, stock and stone; that Mecklemburg
House Collegiate School is a thing of the past, and that they had
better remove their sons immediately, and let them have the means to
travel with, because I have none."

"When did Booker say he would distrain?"

Booker was the creditor who held the bill of sale.

"He didn't specify the exact hour and minute, but it'll only be a
question of an hour or two in any case. We can't pay and the things
must go."

"But you have received money from some of the boys in advance."

Mr. Fletcher got up, and began to pace the room again.

"I have received money from most of them. Jane, what am I to do? As
you know very well, I have received from more than half the boys the
term's fees in advance. I am not clear that they could not prosecute
me for obtaining money by means of false pretences; but, in any case,
I shall feel that I have played the part of a dishonest man. Why
didn't I say frankly at the beginning of the term, I am ruined, ruined
hopelessly! and gone down at once without a pretence of struggling
through another term?"

"We have struggled through so many, we could not tell we should not be
able to struggle again."

"At any rate, we haven't. Before we're halfway through the term we're
beaten, and I have received money on what was very much like false
pretences. Then there are Mr. Till and Mr. Shane; they're entitled to
a term's salary, if they could not lay claim to a term's notice too."

Mrs. Fletcher's face grew cold and hard, and there was an unpleasant
glitter in her eyes.

"I shouldn't trouble myself about them; a more helpless lout than Mr.
Shane, as you call him, I never saw, and to my mind Mr. Till never has
been worth his salt. This morning, when he was left in charge, the
school was like a bear-garden; I had to go in half a dozen times to
ask what the noise was about. It's my belief that if you had had
proper assistance you wouldn't be in the state you are in now."

Mr. Fletcher sighed.

"That is not the question, my dear; I owe them the money, and they
ought to be paid. I know that they are both almost, if not quite
penniless, and if I do not pay them something I doubt whether they
will have the means to take them up to town. Remember, too, that this
is the middle of term, and that how long they will be without even the
chance of getting another situation goodness only knows."

"And are you better off? Have you better prospect of a situation?
Beauclerk, before you pay either of those men a penny you will have to
speak to me; I will not be robbed by them."

"If I would I have nothing to pay them with, so there is an end of it,
my dear."

"Do you know what Mr. Shane's latest performance has been?" Struck
by something in his wife's tone, Mr. Fletcher glanced at her with
inquiry in his eyes. "I have not told you yet, because I have been
too much upset by the news which you have brought to tell you
anything,--goodness knows we have enough of our own to bear without
having to bear the brunt of that clown's blunders too."

Seeing that his wife's eloquence bade fair to carry her away, Mr.
Fletcher interposed a question.

"What has Mr. Shane been doing?"

"Doing! I'll tell you what he has been doing,--and you talk of robbing
yourself to give him money! He let four of those boys go out in the
rain this afternoon, when I expressly told him not to; and it would
seem as if he has let them go for good, for they are still out now."

Her husband looked at her, not quite catching the meaning of her
words.

"Still out now?"

"Yes, still out now. Bailey, Griffin, Wheeler and Ellis went out this
afternoon, in all the rain and fog, with Mr. Shane's permission; and
out they've stopped, for they're not back yet."

"Not back yet! Jane, you cannot mean it. Why, it's nearly midnight."
Mr. Fletcher looked at his venerable silver watch, which had come to
him, with the rest of his possessions, from his father. "What's that?"

Husband and wife listened. The silence which reigned without had been
broken by a crash from the schoolroom, a crash which bore a strong
family resemblance to the sound made by the upsetting of a form.

"It's those boys!" said Mrs. Fletcher. "They're getting through the
window."

She hurried off to see, her husband following closely after. All the
lights were out; save the sitting-room which they had left, all the
house was dark. She called to him to bring the lamp. Returning, he
snatched it from the table and went after her again.

They entered the schoolroom, Mr. Fletcher acting as lamp-bearer.
Directly the door was opened they were conscious of a strong current
of air within the room. Mrs. Fletcher went swiftly forward, picking
her way among the desks and forms, and the cause of the noise they had
heard and the draught they felt was soon apparent. The furthest window
was wide open. In front of it a form was overturned upon the floor, a
form which some one effecting a burglarious entrance through the
window in the dark had unwittingly turned over. The lady's quick eye
caught sight of a figure crouching behind a neighbouring desk. It did
not take her long to drag a young gentleman out by the collar of his
coat.

"Well--upon--my--word!"

Her astonishment was genuine, and excusable; few more disreputable
figures ever greeted a lady's eye.

"Is this Bailey?"

It was Bailey. Perhaps at that moment Bailey rather wished it wasn't;
but the surprise of his sudden capture had bereft him of the power of
speech, and he was unable to deny his identity. The lady did nothing
else but stare. Suddenly somebody else made his appearance at the
window, a head rose above the window-sill, and a meek, modest voice
inquired,--

"Please, ma'am, may I come in?"

The new-comer was Edward Wheeler. The lady's astonishment redoubled.

"Well--I--never!"

Taking this exclamation to convey permission, Wheeler gradually raised
himself the necessary height, and finally, after a few convulsive
plunges to prevent himself from slipping back again, scrambled through
the window and stood upon the floor. Wheeler presented a companion
picture to his friend. As he had lost his hat at an early hour of the
evening, he, perhaps, in some slight details, bore away the palm from
Bailey. Mrs. Fletcher stared at them both in blank amazement; in all
her experience of boys she never had seen anything quite equal to
these two. Mr. Fletcher, lamp in hand, came up to join in the
inspection.

"Where have you boys been?" he asked.

"Out to tea," said Bailey.

Mrs. Fletcher sniffed disdainfully.

"Out to tea! Don't tell me that! I should think you've been out to tea
in a ditch!"

Mr. Fletcher carried on the examination.

"How dare you tell me you've been to tea! Where have you boys been?"

"We have been out to tea," said Bailey.

"And where, sir, have you been having tea, that you come back at this
hour, and in such a plight as that?"

"Washington Villa," answered Bailey.

"Washington Villa! And where's Washington Villa? But never mind that,
I shall have something to say to you in the morning. Where are those
other boys? Where are Griffin and Ellis?"

"They're coming," muttered Bailey.