Transcriber’s Note:

Please consult the [note] at the end of this text for a discussion of any textual issues encountered in its preparation.

The cover image was fabricated from the title page and is placed in the public domain.

THE HUMAN BOY

BY

EDEN PHILLPOTTS

AUTHOR OF “CHILDREN OF THE MIST”

“FOLLY AND FRESH AIR” ETC.

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

NEW YORK AND LONDON

1900

TO

PHILLPOTTS “MINOR”

AS A TRIFLING TRIBUTE OF FRATERNAL REGARD

AND IN GREEN AND GRATEFUL MEMORY OF

OUR HAPPY BOYHOOD

CONTENTS

The Human Boy

The Artfulness of Steggles

I

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mathers got redder, and began peeling a chestnut.

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

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

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

“Perhaps she doesn’t know.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes, sir,” said Nubby, rising.

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

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

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

“I am.”

“Well, I hope you’ll like Merivale.”

“Do you?”

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

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

“I can draw,” said Steggles.

“What?”

“Devils.”

“Do one,” said Mathers.

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

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

“I can smoke.”

“Cigarettes? So can anybody.”

“No; a pipe.”

“Oh! where did you learn that?”

“At Harrow.”

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

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

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

“Can you play anything?” asked Mathers.

“The piano.”

Mathers shivered and Nubby grew excited.

“So can I. We’ll do duets,” he said.

“If you like,” said Steggles.

Then the tea-bell rang.

II

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

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

“How d’you like Steggles?” I said.

“Very well. He’s clever,” she said.

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

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

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

“You are, though.”

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

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

“And also the piano, perhaps?”

“He plays beautifully.”

“Have you seen him play football?”

“No.”

“Lucky for you.”

“Football isn’t everything.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then she went.

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

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

III

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

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

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

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

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

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

“So would I,” I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It widens the mind,” said Steggles.

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

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

“Better not smoke any more,” said Steggles.

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

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

“Wasn’t the pipe--eh?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We walked on a few yards farther.

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

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

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

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

He spoke the words with an awful effort.

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

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

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

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

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

“You’ll all be late,” she said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Protest of the Wing Dormitory

I

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

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

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

“Of course,” said Bradwell.

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

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

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

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

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

II

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

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

Then followed the names.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First Thompson said:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The parley is ended,” said Trelawney.

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

III

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

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

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

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

“We surrender,” said Trelawny.

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

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

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

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

“Freckles” and “Frenchy”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Stick him up--how?” I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How?” I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Concerning Corkey Minimus

I

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

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

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

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

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

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

“My tie, sir.”

Then Briggs said: