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A Dog with a Bad Name

by Talbot Baines Reed · English · Gutenberg #21038 · 556,567 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: A Dog with a Bad Name

Author: Talbot Baines Reed


        
Release date: April 12, 2007 [eBook #21038]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21038

Credits: Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A DOG WITH A BAD NAME ***




Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




A Dog with a Bad Name

By Talbot Baines Reed
________________________________________________________________________
The story opens in a rather run-down school.  There is an unfortunate
incident in which a boy is almost killed, and a boy of the name of
Jeffreys, not a very popular chap, is held to have been responsible.

Thus the dog acquires a bad name.  Throughout the next few years of
Jeffreys' life this incident is brought up against him.  He is brought
lower and lower, till eventually he finds somewhere to live in the
utmost poverty, amongst the very poor.  Here by a twist of fortune he
ends up looking after some abandoned children.  There is a fire, and he
rescues somebody, but it is only when he gets that person back to his
room that he realises it is the very person whom he had almost killed
all those years before.

This book is very well written.  I have been wondering whether it is a
book for teenagers, or a book for adults, and have come to the
conclusion that it's for teenagers, but only the really bright ones, as
there is so much food for thought in it.  NH.
________________________________________________________________________
A DOG WITH A BAD NAME

BY TALBOT BAINES REED



CHAPTER ONE.

DRY-ROT.

Bolsover College was in a bad temper.  It often was; for as a rule it
had little else to do; and what it had, was usually a less congenial
occupation.

Bolsover, in fact, was a school which sadly needed two trifling reforms
before it could be expected to do much good in the world.  One was, that
all its masters should be dismissed; the other was, that all its boys
should be expelled.  When these little changes had been effected there
was every chance of turning the place into a creditable school; but not
much chance otherwise.

For Bolsover College was afflicted with dry-rot.  The mischief had begun
not last term or the term before.  Years ago it had begun to eat into
the place, and every year it grew more incurable.  Occasional efforts
had been made to patch things up.  A boy had been now and then expelled.
A master had now and then "resigned."  An old rule had now and then
been enforced.  A new rule was now and then instituted.  But you can't
patch up a dry-rot, and Bolsover crumbled more and more the oftener it
was touched.

Years ago it had dropped out of the race with the other public-schools.
Its name had disappeared from the pass list of the University and Civil
Service candidates.  Scarcely a human being knew the name of its head-
master; and no assistant-master was ever known to make Bolsover a
stepping-stone to pedagogic promotion.  The athletic world knew nothing
of a Bolsover Eleven or Fifteen; and, worse still, no Bolsover boy was
ever found who was proud either of his school or of himself.

Somebody asks, why, if the place was in such a bad way, did parents
continue to send their boys there, when they had all the public-schools
in England to choose from?  To that the answer is very simple.  Bolsover
was cheap--horribly cheap!

"A high class public-school education," to quote the words of the
prospectus, "with generous board and lodging, in a beautiful midland
county, in a noble building with every modern advantage; gymnasium,
cricket-field, and a full staff of professors and masters," for
something under forty pounds a year, was a chance not to be snuffed at
by an economical parent or guardian.  And when to these attractions was
promised "a strict attention to morals, and a supervision of wardrobes
by an experienced matron," even the hearts of mothers went out towards
the place.

After all, argues many an easy-going parent, a public-school education
is a public-school education, whether dear Benjamin gets it at Eton, or
Shrewsbury, or Bolsover.  We cannot afford Eton or Shrewsbury, but we
will make a pinch and send him to Bolsover, which sounds almost as good
and may even be better.

So to Bolsover dear Benjamin goes, and becomes a public-school boy.  In
that "noble building" he does pretty much as he likes, and eats very
much what he can.  The "full staff of professors and masters" interfere
very little with his liberty, and the "attention to morals" is never
inconveniently obtruded.  He goes home pale for the holidays and comes
back paler each term.  He scuffles about now and then in the play-ground
and calls it athletics.  He gets up Caesar with a crib and Todhunter
with a key, and calls it classics and mathematics.  He loafs about with
a toady and calls it friendship.  In short, he catches the Bolsover dry-
rot, and calls it a public-school training:

What is it makes Benjamin and his seventy-nine school-fellows (for
Bolsover had its full number of eighty boys this term) in such a
particularly ill-humour this grey October morning?  Have his professors
and masters gently hinted to him that he is expected to know his lessons
next time he goes into class?  Or has the experienced matron been
overdoing her attention to his morals?  Ask him.  "What!" he says,
"don't you know what the row is?  It's enough to make anybody shirty.
Frampton, this new head-master, you know, he's only been here a week or
two, he's going to upset everything.  I wish to goodness old Mullany had
stuck on, cad as he was.  He let us alone, but this beast Frampton's
smashing the place up.  What do you think?--you'd never guess, he's made
a rule the fellows are all to tub every morning, whether they like it or
not.  What do you call that?  I know I'll get my governor to make a row
about it.  It won't wash, I can tell you.  What business has he to make
us tub, eh, do you hear?  That's only one thing.  He came and jawed us
in the big room this morning, and said he meant to make football
compulsory!  There!  You needn't gape as if you thought I was gammoning.
I'm not, I mean it.  Football's to be compulsory.  Every man Jack's got
to play, whether he can or not.  I call it brutal!  The only thing is,
it won't be done.  The fellows will kick.  I shall.  I'm not going to
play football to please a cad like Frampton, or any other cad!"

What Benjamin says is, for a wonder, the truth.  A curious change had
come over Bolsover since the end of last term.  Old Mr Mullany, good
old fossil that he was, had resigned.  The boys had heard casually of
the event at the end of last term.  But the old gentleman so seldom
appeared in their midst, and when he did, so rarely made any show of
authority, that the school had grown to look upon him as an inoffensive
old fogey, whose movements made very little difference to anybody.

It was not till the holidays were over, and Mr Frampton introduced
himself as the new head-master, that Bolsover awoke to the knowledge
that a change had taken place.  Mr Frampton--he was not even a "Doctor"
or a "Reverend," but was a young man with sandy whiskers, and a red
tie--had a few ideas of his own on the subject of dry-rot.  He evidently
preferred ripping up entire floors to patching single planks, and he
positively scared his colleagues and pupils by the way he set to work.
He was young and enthusiastic, and was perhaps tempted to overdo things
at first.  When people are being reformed, they need a little breathing
time now and then; but Mr Frampton seemed to forget it.

He had barely been in his post a week when two of the under-masters
resigned their posts.  Undaunted he brought over two new men, who shared
his own ideas, and installed them into the vacancies.  Then three more
of the old masters resigned; and three more new men took their places.
Then the "experienced matron" resigned, and Mrs Frampton took her
place.  No sooner was that done than the order went out that every boy
should have a cold bath every morning, unless excused by the doctor.
The school couldn't resign, so they sulked, and gasped in the unwelcome
element, and coughed heart-rendingly whenever they met the tyrant.  The
tyrant was insatiate.  Before the school could recover from his first
shock, the decree for compulsory football staggered it.

Compulsory football!  Why, half the fellows in the school had never put
their toes to a football in their lives, and those who had had rarely
done more than punt the leather aimlessly about, when they felt in the
humour to kick something, and nobody or nothing more convenient was at
hand.  But it was useless to represent this to Mr Frampton.

"The sooner you begin to play the better," was his reply to all such
objections.

But the old goal posts were broken, and the ball was flabby and nearly
worn-out.

"The new goals and ball are to arrive from London to-day."

But they had not got flannels or proper clothes to play in.

"They must get flannels.  Every boy must have flannels, and meanwhile
they must wear the oldest shirts and trousers they had."

Shirts and trousers!  Then they weren't even to be allowed to wear coats
and waistcoats this chilly weather!  Hadn't they better wait till next
week, till they could ask leave of their parents, and get their flannels
and practise a bit?

"No.  Between now and Saturday they would have two clear days to
practise.  On Saturday, the Sixth would play the School at three
o'clock."

And Mr Frampton, there being nothing more to say on this subject, went
off to see what his next pleasant little surprise should be.  Bolsover,
meanwhile, snarled over the matter in ill-tempered conclaves in the
play-ground.

"It's simple humbug," said Farfield, one of the Sixth.  "I defy him to
make me play if I don't choose."

"I shall stand with my hands in my pockets, and not move an inch," said
another.

"I mean to sit down on the grass and have a nap," said a third.

"All very well," said a youngster, called Forrester; "if you can get all
the other fellows to do the same.  But if some of them play, it'll look
as if you funked it."

"Who cares what it looks like?" said Farfield.  "It will look like not
being made to do what they've no right to make us do--that's all I care
about."

"Well, I don't know," said Pridger, another of the Sixth; "if it came to
the School licking us, I fancy I'd try to prevent that."

"And if it came to the Sixth licking us," said young Forrester, who was
of the audacious order, "I fancy _I'd_ try to put a stopper on that."

There was a smile at this, for the valiant junior was small for his age,
and flimsily built.  Smiles, however, were not the order of the day, and
for the most part Bolsover brooded over her tribulations in sulky
silence.

The boys had not much in common, and even a calamity like the present
failed to bring them together.  The big boys mooned about and thought of
their lost liberties, of the afternoons in the tuck-shop, of the yellow-
backed novels under the trees, of the loafings down town, and wondered
if they should ever be happy again.  The little boys--some of them--wept
secretly in corners, as they pictured themselves among the killed and
wounded on the terrible football field.  And as the sharp October wind
cut across the play-ground, they shuddered, great and small, at the
prospect of standing there on Saturday, without coats or waistcoats, and
wondered if Frampton was designedly dooming them to premature graves.

A few, a very few, of the more sensible ones, tried to knock up a little
practice game and prepare themselves for the terrible ordeal.  Among
these were two boys belonging to the group whose conversation the reader
has already overheard.

One of them, young Forrester, has already been introduced.  Junior as he
was, he was a favourite all over Bolsover, for he was about the only boy
in the school who was always in good spirits, and did not seem to be
infected with the universal dry-rot of the place.  He was a small,
handsome boy, older indeed then he looked (for he was nearly fifteen),
not particularly clever or particularly jocular.  To look at him you
would have thought him delicate, but there was nothing feeble in his
manner.  He looked you straight in the face with a pair of brown saucy
eyes; he was ready to break his neck to oblige any one; and his pocket-
money (fancy a Bolsover boy having pocket-money!) was common property.
Altogether he was a phenomenon at Bolsover, and fellows took to him
instinctively, as fellows often do take to one whose character and
disposition are a contrast to their own.  Besides this, young Forrester
was neither a prig nor a toady, and devoted himself to no one in
particular, so that everybody had the benefit of his good spirits, and
enjoyed his pranks impartially.

The other boy, who appeared to be about eighteen or nineteen, was of a
different kind.  He, too, was a cut above the average Bolsoverian, for
he was clever, and had a mind of his own.  But he acted almost entirely
on antipathies.  He disliked everybody, except, perhaps, young
Forrester, and he found fault with everything.  Scarfe--that was his
name was a Sixth Form boy, who did the right thing because he disliked
doing what everybody else did, which was usually the wrong.  He disliked
his school-fellows, and therefore was not displeased with Mr Frampton's
reforms; but he disliked Mr Frampton and the new masters, and therefore
hoped the school would resist their authority.  As for what he himself
should do, that would depend on which particular antipathy was uppermost
when the time came.

Curiously enough, Bolsover by no means disliked Scarfe.  They rather
respected a fellow who had ideas of his own, when they themselves had so
few; and as each boy, as a rule, could sympathise with his dislike of
everybody else, with one exception, he found plenty of adherents and not
a few toadies.

Forrester was about the only boy he really did not dislike, because
Forrester did not care twopence whether any one liked him or not, and he
himself was quite fond of Scarfe.

"What do you think the fellows will do?" said the junior, after
attempting for the sixth time to "drop" the ball over the goal without
success.

"Why, obey, of course," said Scarfe scornfully.

"Shall you?"

"I suppose so."

"Why, I thought you were going to stick out."

"No doubt a lot of the fellows would like it if I did.  They always like
somebody else to do what they don't care to do themselves."

"Well, you and I'll be on different sides," said the youngster, making
another vain attempt at the goal.  "I'm sorry for you, my boy."

"So am I; I'd like to see the Sixth beaten.  But there's not much chance
of it if the kicking's left to you."

"I tell you what," said Forrester, ignoring the gibe.  "I'm curious to
know what Cad Jeffreys means to do.  We're bound to have some fun if
he's in it."

"Cad Jeffreys," said Scarfe, with a slight increase of scorn in his face
and voice, "will probably assist the School by playing for the Sixth."

Forrester laughed.

"I hear he nearly drowned himself in the bath the first day, and half
scragged Shrimpton for grinning at him.  If he gets on as well at
football, Frampton will have something to answer for.  Why, here he
comes."

"Suppose you invite him to come and have a knock up with the ball,"
suggested the senior.

The figure which approached the couple was one which, familiar as it was
to Bolsover, would have struck a stranger as remarkable.  A big youth,
so disproportionately built as to appear almost deformed, till you
noticed that his shoulders were unusually broad and his feet and hands
unusually large.  Whether from indolence or infirmity it was hard to
say, his gait was shambling and awkward, and the strength that lurked in
his big limbs and chest seemed to unsteady him as he floundered top-
heavily across the play-ground.  But his face was the most remarkable
part about him.  The forehead, which overhung his small, keen eyes, was
large and wrinkled.  His nose was flat, and his thick, restless lips
seemed to be engaged in an endless struggle to compel a steadiness they
never attained.  It was an unattractive face, with little to redeem it
from being hideous.  The power in it seemed all to centre in its angry
brow, and the softness in its restless mouth.  The balance was bad, and
the general impression forbidding.  Jeffreys was nineteen, but looked
older, for he had whiskers--an unpardonable sin in the eyes of
Bolsover--and was even a little bald.  His voice was deep and loud.  A
stranger would have mistaken him for an inferior master, or, judging
from his shabby garments, a common gardener.

Those who knew him were in no danger of making that mistake.  No boy was
more generally hated.  How he came by his name of Cad Jeffreys no one
knew, except that no other name could possibly describe him.  The small
boys whispered to one another that once on a time he had murdered his
mother, or somebody.  The curious discovered that he was a lineal
descendant of Judge Jeffreys, of hanging celebrity.  The seniors
represented him as a cross between Nero and Caliban, and could not
forgive him for being head classic.

The one thing fellows could appreciate in him was his temper.  A child
in arms, if he knew the way, could get a rise out of Cad Jeffreys, and
in these dull times that was something to be thankful for.

Forrester was perhaps the most expert of Jeffreys' enemies.  He worried
the Cad not so much out of spite as because it amused him, and, like the
nimble matador, he kept well out of reach of the bull all the time he
was firing shots at him.

"Hullo, Jeff!" he called out, as the Cad approached.  "Are you going to
play in the match on Saturday?"

"No," said Jeffreys.

"You're not?  Haven't you got any old clothes to play in?"

Jeffreys' brow darkened.  He glanced down at his own shabby garments,
and then at Scarfe's neat suit.

"I've got flannels," he said.

"Flannels!  Why don't you play, then?  Do you think you won't look well
in flannels?  He would, wouldn't he, Scarfe?"

"I don't see how he could look better than he does now," replied Scarfe,
looking at the figure before him.  Then noticing the black looks on his
enemy's face, he added--

"Forrester and I were having a little practice at kicking, Jeff.  You
may as well join us, whether you play in the match or not."

"Why, are you going to play?" asked Jeffreys, not heeding the
invitation.  "Frampton has no right to make us do it."

"Why not?  He's head-master.  Besides, you can get a doctor's
certificate if you like."

"No, I can't; I'm not ill."

"Then you'll have to play, of course.  Everybody will, and you'd better
come and practise with us now.  Do you know how to play?"

"Of course I do," said Jeffreys, "I've played at home."

"All serene.  Have a shot at the goal, then."

The Cad's experience of football at home must have been of a humble
description, for his attempt at a kick now was a terrible fiasco.  He
missed the ball completely, and, losing his balance at the same time,
fell heavily to the ground.

"Bravo!" cried Forrester, "I wish I'd learnt football at home; I
couldn't do that to save my life."

"I slipped," said Jeffreys, rising slowly to his feet, and flushing
crimson.

"Did you?" said the irreverent youth.  "I thought it was part of the
play.  Stand out of the way, though, while I take a shot."

Before, however, Jeffreys could step aside, a neat and, for a wonder,
accurate drop-kick from Forrester sent the ball violently against the
side of the unwieldy senior's head, knocking off his hat and nearly
precipitating him a second time to the earth.

The storm fairly burst now.  As the fleet-footed junior darted past him
the other struck out wildly; but missing his blow, he seized the ball
and gave a furious kick in the direction of the retreating enemy.

It was a fine drop-kick, and soared far over the head of its intended
victim, straight between the goal posts, an undoubted and brilliant
goal.

Forrester stopped his retreat to applaud, and Scarfe scornfully joined.
"Awfully good," said he; "you certainly must play on Saturday.  We've
nobody can kick like that."

"I meant it to hit Forrester," said Jeffreys, panting with his effort,
and his lips nearly white with excitement.

"Would you like another shot?" called out the young gentleman in
question.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, losing your temper like that,"
said Scarfe bitterly.  "Couldn't you see he hit you by accident?"

"He did it on purpose," said Jeffreys savagely.

"Nonsense.  He was aiming at the goal and missed.  You did the same
thing yourself, only you aimed at him."

"I wish I had hit him!" growled Jeffreys, glaring first at Scarfe, than
at Forrester, and finally shambling off the ground.

"There's a nice amiable lamb," said Forrester, as he watched the
retreating figure.  "I'm sometimes half ashamed to bait him, he does get
into such tantrums.  But it's awfully tempting."

"You'd better keep out of his way the rest of the day," said Scarfe.

"Oh, bless you, he'll have worked it off in half an hour.  What do you
bet I don't get him to do my Latin prose for me this afternoon?"

Forrester knew his man; and that afternoon, as if nothing had happened,
the junior sat in the Cad's study, eating some of the Cad's bread and
jam while the Cad wrote out the junior's exercise for him.



CHAPTER TWO.

A FOOTBALL TRAGEDY.

The two days' grace which Mr Frampton had almost reluctantly allowed
before putting into execution his new rule of compulsory athletics told
very much in his favour.

Bolsover, after the first shock, grew used to the idea and even
resigned.  After all, it would be a variety, and things were precious
dull as they were.  As to making a rule of it, that was absurd, and
Frampton could hardly be serious when he talked of doing so.  But on
Saturday, if it was fine, and they felt in the humour--well, they would
see about it.

With which condescending resolution they returned to their loafings and
novels and secret cigarettes, and tried to forget all about Mr
Frampton.

But Mr Frampton had no idea of being forgotten.  He had the
schoolmaster's virtue of enthusiasm, but he lacked the schoolmaster's
virtue of patience.  He hated the dry-rot like poison, and could not
rest till he had ripped up every board and rafter that harboured it.

Any ordinary reformer would have been satisfied with the week's work he
had already accomplished.  But Mr Frampton added yet another blow at
the very heart of the dry-rot before the week was out.

On the day before the football match Bolsover was staggered, and, so to
speak, struck all of a heap by the announcement that in future the
school tuck-shop would be closed until after the dinner hour!

Fellows stared at one another with a sickly, incredulous smile when they
first heard the grim announcement and wondered whether, after all, the
new head-master _was_ an escaped lunatic.  A few gifted with more
presence of mind than others bethought them of visiting the shop and of
dispelling the hideous nightmare by optical demonstration.

Alas! the shutters were up.  Mother Partridge was not at the receipt of
custom, but instead, written in the bold, square hand of Mr Frampton
himself, there confronted them the truculent notice, "The shop will for
the future be open only before breakfast and after dinner."

"Brutal!" gasped Farfield, as he read it.  "Does he mean to starve us as
well as drown us?"

"Hard lines for poor old Mother Partridge," suggested Scarfe.

This cry took.  There was somehow a lurking sense of shame which made it
difficult for Bolsover to rise in arms on account of the injury done to
itself.  Money had been wasted, appetites had been lost, digestions had
been ruined in that shop, and they knew it.

If you had put the question to any one of the boys who crowded down,
hungry after their bath, to breakfast on the day of the football match,
he would have told you that Frampton was as great a brute as ever, and
that it was a big shame to make fellows play whether they liked it or
not.  For all that, he would tell you, _he_ was going to play, much as
he hated it, to avoid a row.  And if you had pressed him further he
would have confided to you that it was expected the School would beat
the Sixth, and that he rather hoped, as he must play, he would get a
chance at the ball before the match was over.  From all which you might
gather that Bolsover was reluctantly coming round to take an interest in
the event.

"Fortune favours the brave," said Mr Steele, one of his assistants, to
the head-master at dinner-time.  "You have conquered before you have
struck, mighty Caesar."

Mr Frampton smiled.  He was flushed and excited.  Two days ago he had
seemed to be committed to a desperate venture.  Now, a straight path
seemed to open before him, and Bolsover, in his enthusiastic
imagination, was already a reformed, reinvigorated institution.

"Yes, Steele," said he, as he glanced from the window and watched the
boys trooping down towards the meadow.  "This day will be remembered at
Bolsover."

Little dreamed the brave head-master how truly his prophecy would be
fulfilled.

An arrangement had been made to give the small boys a match of their
own.  The young gladiators themselves, who had secretly wept over their
impending doom, were delighted to be removed beyond the reach of the
giants of the Sixth.  And the leaders of the School forces were devoutly
thankful to be disencumbered of a crowd of meddlesome "kids" who would
have spoiled sport, even if they did not litter the ground with their
corpses.

The sight of the new goal posts and ball, which Mr Freshfield, a junior
master, was heard to explain was a present from the head-master to the
school, had also a mollifying effect.  And the bracing freshness of the
air and the self-respect engendered by the sensation of their flannels
(for most of the players had contrived to provide themselves with armour
of this healthy material) completed their reconciliation to their lot,
and drove all feelings of resentment against their tyrant, for the
present at any rate, quite out of their heads.

In a hurried consultation of the seniors, Farfield, who was known to be
a player, was nominated captain of the senior force; while a similar
council of war among the juniors had resulted in the appointment of
Ranger of the Fifth to lead the hosts of the School.

Mr Freshfield, with all the ardour of an old general, assisted
impartially in advising as to the disposition of the field on either
side; and, for the benefit of such as might be inexperienced at the
game, rehearsed briefly some of the chief rules of the game as played
under the Rugby laws.

"Now, are you ready?" said he, when all preliminaries were settled, and
the ball lay, carefully titled, ready for Farfield's kick-off.

"Wait a bit," cried some one.  "Where's Jeffreys?"

Where, indeed?  No one had noticed his absence till now; and one or two
boys darted off to look for him.

But before they had gone far a white apparition appeared floundering
across the meadow in the direction of the goals; and a shout of derisive
welcome rose, as Jeffreys, arrayed in an ill-fitting suit of white
holland, and crowned with his blue flannel cap, came on to the scene.

"He's been sewing together the pillow-cases to make his trousers," said
some one.

"Think of a chap putting on his dress shirt to play football in," cried
another.

"Frampton said we were to wear the oldest togs we'd got," said a third,
"not our Sunday best."

Jeffreys, as indeed it was intended, heard these facetious remarks on
his strange toilet, and his brow grew heavy.

"Come on," said Scarfe, as he drew near, "it wasn't fair to the other
side for you not to play."

"I couldn't find my boots," replied the Cad shortly, scowling round him.

"Perhaps you'll play forward," said Farfield, "and if ever you don't
know what to do, go and stand outside those flag posts, and for mercy's
sake let the ball alone."

"Boo-hoo!  I _am_ in such a funk," cried Forrester with his mocking
laugh.  "Thank goodness I'm playing back."

"Come now," called Mr Freshfield impatiently, "are you ready?  Kick
off, Farfield.  Look out, School."

Next moment the match had begun.

As might have been expected, there was at first a great deal more
confusion than play.  Bolsover was utterly unused to doing anything
together, and football of all games needs united action.

There was a great deal of scrimmaging, but very few kicks and very few
runs.  The ball was half the time invisible, and the other half in
touch.  Mr Freshfield had time after time to order a throw-in to be
repeated, or rule a kick as "off-side."  The more ardent players forgot
the duty of protecting their flanks and rear; and the more timid
neglected their chances of "piling up" the scrimmages.  The Sixth got in
the way of the Sixth, and the School often spoiled the play of the
School.

But after a quarter of an hour or so the chaos began to resolve itself,
and each side, so to speak, came down to its bearings.  Mr Frampton, as
he walked across from the small boys' match, was surprised as well as
delighted to notice the business-like way in which the best players on
either side were settling down to their work.  There was Farfield,
flushed and dogged, leading on his forwards, and always on the ball.
There was Scarfe, light and dodgy, ready for a run or a neat drop-kick
from half-back.  There was Ranger and Phipps of the Fifth, backing one
another up like another Nisus and Euryalus.  There was young Forrester,
merry and plucky, saving his goal more than once by a prompt touch-down.
There, even, was the elephantine Jeffreys, snorting and pounding in the
thick of the fray, feeling his feet under him, and doing his clumsy best
to fight the battle of his side.

The game went hard against the School, despite their determined rallies
and gallant sorties.  Young Forrester in goal had more than one man's
share of work; and Scarfe's drops from the rear of the Sixth scrimmage
flew near and still nearer the enemy's goal.

Once, just before half-time, he had what seemed a safe chance, but at
the critical moment Jeffreys' ungainly bulk interposed, and received on
his chest the ball which would certainly have carried victory to his
side.

"Clumsy lout!" roared Farfield; "didn't I tell you to stand out of the
way and not go near the ball--you idiot!  Go and play back, do."

Jeffreys turned on him darkly.

"You think I did it on purpose," said he.  "I didn't."

"Go and play back!" repeated Farfield--"or go and hang yourself."

Jeffreys took a long breath, and departed with a scowl to the rear.

"Half-time!" cried Mr Freshfield.  "Change sides."

It was a welcome summons.  Both sides needed a little breathing space to
gird themselves for the final tussle.

The School was elated at having so far eluded actual defeat, and
cheerily rallied their opponents as they crossed over.  Jeffreys, in
particular, as he made moodily to his new station, came in for their
jocular greetings.

"Thanks awfully, Cad, old man!" cried one; "we knew you'd give us a leg
up."

"My word! doesn't he look pleased with himself!" said another.  "No
wonder!"

"Is that the way they taught you to play football at home?" said young
Forrester, emphasising his question with an acorn neatly pitched at the
Cad's ear.

Jeffreys turned savagely with lifted arm, but Forrester was far beyond
his enemy's reach, and his hand dropped heavily at his own side as he
continued his sullen march to the Sixth's goal.

"Are you ready?" shouted Mr Freshfield.  "Kick off.  Ranger!  Look out,
Sixth!"

The game recommenced briskly.  The School, following up the advantage of
their kick-off, and cheered by their recent luck, made a desperate
onslaught into the enemy's territory, which for a while took all the
energy of the Sixth to repel.

Phipps and Ranger were irrepressible, and had it not been for the steady
play of Scarfe and the Sixth backs, that formidable pair of desperadoes
might have turned the tide of victory by their own unaided exertions.

In the defence of the seniors, Jeffreys, it need hardly be said, took no
part.  He stood moodily near one of the posts, still glaring in the
direction of his insulters, and apparently heedless of the fortunes, of
the game.

His inaction, however, was not destined to last long.

The second half game had lasted about a quarter of an hour, and the
School was still stubbornly holding their advanced position in the
proximity of the enemy's goal, when the ball suddenly, and by one of
those mysterious chances of battle, burst clear of the scrimmage and
darted straight to where Jeffreys stood.

"Pick it up and run--like mad!" shouted Farfield.

With a sudden swoop which astonished his beholders the Cad pounced on
the ball and started to run in the direction of the ill-protected goal
of the School.

Till they saw him in motion with an almost clear field ahead, no one had
had any conception how powerfully he was built or how fast he could run.
The School, rash and sanguine of victory, had pressed to the front,
leaving scarcely half a dozen behind to guard their rear.

Three of these Jeffreys had passed before the School was well aware what
he was doing.  Then a shout of consternation arose, mingled with the
frantic cheers of the Sixth.

"Collar him!  Have him over!  Stop him there!  Look out in goal!"

But Jeffreys was past stopping.  Like a cavalry charger who dashes on to
the guns heedless of everything, and for the time being gone mad, so the
Bolsover Cad, with the shouts behind him and the enemy's goal in front,
saw and heard nothing else.  The two men who stepped out at him were
brushed aside like reeds before a boat's keel; and with half the field
before him only one enemy remained between him and victory.

That enemy was young Forrester!  There was something almost terrible in
the furious career of the big boy as he bore down on the fated goal.
Those behind ceased to pursue, and watched the result in breathless
suspense.

Even the saucy light on Forrester's face faded as he hesitated a moment
between fear and duty.

"Collar him there!" shouted the School.

"He'll pass him easily," said the Sixth.

Forrester stepped desperately across his adversary's path, resolved to
do his duty, cost what it might.

Jeffreys never swerved from his course, right or left.

"He's going to charge the youngster!" gasped Farfield.

Forrester, who had counted on the runner trying to pass him, became
suddenly aware that the huge form was bearing straight down upon him.

The boy was no coward, but for a moment he stood paralysed.

That moment was fatal.  There was a crash, a shout!  Next moment
Jeffreys was seen staggering to his feet and carrying the ball behind
the goal.  But no one heeded him.  Every eye was turned to where young
Forrester lay on his back motionless, with his face as white as death.



CHAPTER THREE.

GONE!

It would be difficult to picture the horror and dismay which followed
the terrible termination to the football match described in our last
chapter.

For a second or two every one stood where he was, as if rooted to the
ground.  Then with an exclamation of horror Mr Freshfield bounded to
the side of the prostrate boy.

"Stand back and give him air!" cried the master, as the school closed
round and gazed with looks of terror on the form of their companion.  He
lay with one arm above his head just as he had fallen.  His cap lay a
yard or two off where he had tossed it before making his final charge.
His eyes were closed, and the deathly pallor of his face was unmoved by
even a quiver of life.

"He's dead!" gasped Farfield.

Mr Freshfield, who had been hastily loosening Forrester's collar, and
had rested his hand for an instant on his heart, looked up with a face
almost as white as the boy's and said--

"Go for the doctor!--and some water."

Half a dozen boys started--thankful to do anything.  Before the ring
could close up again the ungainly form of Jeffreys, still panting from
his run, elbowed his way to the front.  As his eyes fell on the form of
his victim his face turned an ashy hue.  Those who watched him saw that
he was struggling to speak, but no words came.  He stood like one turned
suddenly to stone.

But not for long.

With a cry something resembling a howl, the school by a sudden
simultaneous movement turned upon him.

He put up his hand instinctively, half-deprecatingly, half in self-
defence.  Then as his eyes dropped once more on the motionless form over
which Mr Freshfield was bending, he took half a step forward and
gasped, "I did not--"

Whatever he had intended to say was drowned by another howl of
execration.  The sound of his voice seemed to have opened the floodgates
and let loose the pent-up feelings of the onlookers.  A score of boys
rushed between him and his victim and hustled him roughly out of the
ring.

"Murderer!" cried Scarfe as he gave the first thrust.

And amidst echoes of that terrible cry the Cad was driven forth.

Once he turned with savage face, as though he would resist and fight his
way back into the ring.  But it was only for a moment.  It may have been
a sudden glimpse of that marble face on the grass, or it may have been
terror.  But his uplifted hand fell again at his side, and he dragged
himself dejectedly to the outskirts of the crowd.

There he still hovered, his livid face always turned towards the centre,
drinking in every sound and marking every movement, but not attempting
again to challenge the resentment of his school-fellows by attempting to
enter the awe-struck circle.

It seemed an age before help came.  The crowd stood round silent and
motionless, with their eyes fixed on the poor lifeless head which rested
on Mr Freshfield's knee; straining their eyes for one sign of
animation, yearning still more for the arrival of the doctor.

Mr Freshfield did not dare to lift the form, or even beyond gently
raising the head, to move it in any way.  How anxiously all watched as,
when the water arrived, he softly sponged the brow and held the glass to
the white lips!

Alas! the dark lashes still drooped over those closed eyes, and as each
moment passed Bolsover felt that it stood in the shadow of death.

At last there was a stir, as the sound of wheels approached in the lane.
And presently the figure of the doctor, accompanied by Mr Frampton,
was seen running across the meadow.

As they reached the outskirts of the crowd, Jeffreys laid his hand on
the doctor's arm with an appealing gesture.

"I did not mean--" he began.

But the doctor passed on through the path which the crowd opened for him
to the fallen boy's side.

It was a moment of terrible suspense as he knelt and touched the boy's
wrist, and applied his ear to his chest.  Then in a hurried whisper he
asked two questions of Mr Freshfield, then again bent over the
inanimate form.

They could tell by the look on his face as he looked up that there was
hope--for there was life!

"He's not dead!" they heard him whisper to Mr Frampton.

Still they stood round, silent and motionless.  The relief itself was
terrible.  He was not dead, but would those deep-fringed eyes ever open
again?

The doctor whispered again to Mr Frampton and Mr Freshfield, and the
two passed their hands under the prostrate form to lift it.  But before
they could do so the doctor, who never took his eyes off the boy's face,
held up his hand suddenly, and said "No!  Better have a hurdle,"
pointing to one which lay not far off on the grass.

A dozen boys darted for it, and a dozen more laid their coats upon it to
make a bed.  Once more, amid terrible suspense, they saw the helpless
form raised gently and deposited on the hurdle.  A sigh of relief
escaped when the operation was over, and the sad burden, supported at
each corner by the two masters, Scarfe and Farfield, began to move
slowly towards the school.

"Slowly, and do not keep step.  Above all things avoid a jolt," said the
doctor, keeping the boy's hand in his own.

The crowd opened to let them pass, and then followed in mournful
procession.

As the bearers passed on, Jeffreys, who all this time had been
forgotten, but who had never once turned his face from where Forrester
lay, stepped quickly forward as though to assist in carrying the litter.

His sudden movement, and the startling gesture that accompanied it,
disconcerted the bearers, and caused them for a moment to quicken their
step, thus imparting an unmistakable shock to the precious burden.

The doctor uttered an exclamation of vexation and ordered a halt.
"Stand back, sir!" he cried angrily, waving Jeffreys back; "a jolt like
that may be fatal!"

An authority still more potent than that of the doctor was at hand to
prevent a recurrence of the danger.  Jeffreys was flung out of reach of
the litter by twenty angry hands and hounded out of the procession.

He did not attempt to rejoin it.  For a moment he stood and watched it
as it passed slowly on.  A cold sweat stood on his brow, and every
breath was a gasp.  Then he turned slowly back to the spot where
Forrester had fallen, and threw himself on the ground in a paroxysm of
rage and misery.  It was late and growing dark as he re-entered the
school.  There was a strange, weird silence about the place that
contrasted startlingly with the usual evening clamour.  The boys were
mostly in their studies or collected in whispering groups in the
schoolrooms.

As Jeffreys entered, one or two small boys near the door hissed him and
ran away.  Others who met him in the passage and on the stairs glared at
him with looks of mingled horror and aversion, which would have frozen
any ordinary fellow.

Jeffreys, however, did not appear to heed it, still less to avoid it.
Entering the Sixth Form room, he found most of his colleagues gathered,
discussing the tragedy of the day in the dim light of the bay window.
So engrossed were they that they never noticed his entrance, and it was
not till after standing a minute listening to their talk he broke in, in
his loud tones--

"Is Forrester dead?"

The sound of his voice, so harsh and unexpected, had the effect of an
explosion in their midst.

They recoiled from it, startled and half-scared.  Then, quickly
perceiving the intruder, they turned upon him with a howl.

But this time the Cad did not retreat before them.  He held up his hand
to stop them with a gesture almost of authority.

"Don't!" he exclaimed.  "I'll go.  But tell me, some one, is he dead?"

His big form loomed out in the twilight a head taller than any of his
companions, and there was something in his tone and attitude that held
them back.

"You will be sorry to hear," said Scarfe, one of the first to recover
his self-control, and with a double-edge of bitterness in his voice,
"that he was alive an hour ago."

Jeffreys gave a gasp, and held up his hand again.

"Is there hope for him, then?"

"Not with you in the school, you murderer!" exclaimed Farfield,
advancing on the Cad, and striking him on the mouth.

Farfield had counted the cost, and was prepared for the furious
onslaught which he felt certain would follow.

But Jeffreys seemed scarcely even to be aware of the blow.  He kept his
eyes on Scarfe, to whom he had addressed his last question, and said--

"You won't believe me.  I didn't mean it."

"Don't tell lies," said Scarfe, "you did--coward!"

Jeffreys turned on his heel with what sounded like a sigh.  The fury of
his companions, which had more than once been on the point of breaking
loose in the course of the short conference, vented itself in a howl as
the door closed behind him.  And yet, some said to themselves, would a
murderer have stood and faced them all as he had done?

The long night passed anxiously and sleeplessly for most of the
inhabitants of Bolsover.  The event of the day had awed them into
something like a common feeling.  They forgot their own petty quarrels
and grievances for the time, and thought of nothing but poor Forrester.

The doctor and Mr Frampton never quitted his room all night.  Boys who,
refusing to go to bed, sat anxiously, with their study doors open, eager
to catch the first sound proceeding from that solemn chamber, waited in
vain, and dropped asleep where they sat as the night gave place to dawn.
Even the masters hovered restlessly about with careworn faces, and full
of misgivings as hour passed hour without tidings.

At length--it was about ten o'clock, and the school bell was just
beginning to toll for morning chapel--the door opened, and Mr Frampton
stepped quickly out of the sick-room.

"Stop the bell at once!" he said.

Then Forrester must still be living!

"How is he?" asked a dozen voices, as the head-master passed down the
corridor.

"There is hope," said Mr Frampton, "and, thank God! signs of returning
consciousness."

And with that grain of comfort wearied Bolsover filed slowly into
church.

As Mr Frampton reached his study door he found Scarfe and Farfield
waiting for him.

"Well?" said he wearily, seeing that they had something to say.  "Come
in."

They followed him into the room.

"Is there really hope?" said Scarfe, who truly loved the injured boy.

"I think so.  He never moved or showed sign of life, except the beating
of his heart, till an hour ago.  Then he moved his head and opened his
eyes."

"Did he know you, sir?"

"The doctor thinks he did.  But everything depends now on quiet and
care."

"We wanted to speak to you, sir, about the--the accident," said Farfield
with a little hesitation.

"Yes.  I have hardly heard how it happened, except that he fell in
attempting to collar Jeffreys.  Was it not so?"

"Yes, sir," replied Farfield.  "But--"

"Well, what?" asked Mr Frampton, noticing his hesitation.

"We don't feel sure that it was altogether an accident," said Farfield.

"What!  Do you mean that the boy was intentionally injured?"

"Jeffreys might easily have run round him.  Anybody else would.  He had
the whole field to himself, and no one even near him behind."

"But was it not Forrester who got in front of him?"

"Of course he tried to collar him, sir," said Scarfe; "but he's only a
little boy, and Jeffreys is a giant.  Jeffreys might have fended him off
with his arm, as he did the other fellows who had tried to stop him, or
he might have run round him.  Instead of that,"--and here the speaker's
voice trembled with indignation--"he charged dead at him, and ran right
over him."

Mr Frampton's face clouded over.

"Jeffreys is a clumsy fellow, is he not?" he asked.

"Yes," said Scarfe; "and if it had been any one else than Forrester, we
should all have put it down to his stupidity."

"You mean," said the head-master, "that he had a quarrel with
Forrester?"

"He hated Forrester.  Every one knew that.  Forrester used to make fun
of him and enrage him."

"And you mean to tell me you believe this big boy of nineteen, out of
revenge, deliberately ran over young Forrester in the way you describe?"

"I'm sure of it, sir," said Farfield unhesitatingly.

"No one doubts it," said Scarfe.

Mr Frampton took an uneasy turn up and down the room.  He hated tale-
bearers; but this seemed a case in which he was bound to listen and
inquire further.

"Scarfe and Farfield," said he, after a long pause, "you know of course
as well as I do the nature of the charge you are bringing against your
schoolfellow--the most awful charge one human being can bring against
another.  Are you prepared to repeat all you have said to me in
Jeffreys' presence to-morrow, and before the whole school?"

"Certainly, sir," said both boys.

"It was our duty to tell you, sir," said Scarfe; "and only fair to poor
young Forrester."

"Nothing less than a sense of duty could justify the bringing of such a
terrible accusation," said the head-master, "and I am relieved that you
are prepared to repeat it publicly--to-morrow.  For to-day, let us thank
God for the hope He gives us of the poor sufferer.  Good-bye."

Much as he could have wished it, it was impossible for Mr Frampton,
wearied out as he was with his night's watching, to dismiss from his
mind the serious statement which his two senior boys had made.  The
responsibility which rested on him in consequence was terrible, and it
required all his courage to face it.

That afternoon he sent for Mr Freshfield, and repeated to him the
substance of the accusation against Jeffreys, asking him if he had
noticed anything calculated to confirm the suspicion expressed by the
boys.

Mr Freshfield was naturally very much startled.

"If you had not mentioned it," he said, "I should never have dreamed of
such a thing.  But I confess I have noticed that Forrester and Jeffreys
were on bad terms.  Forrester is a mischievous boy, and Jeffreys, who
you know is rather a lout, seems to have been his special butt.  I am
afraid, too, that Jeffreys' short temper rather encouraged his
tormentors."

"Yes, but about the accident," said Mr Frampton; "you were on the
ground, you know.  Did you notice anything then?"

"There was a little horseplay as the sides were changing over at half-
time.  Forrester, among others, was taunting Jeffreys with a bad piece
of play, and threw something at him.  I was rather struck by the look
almost of fury which passed across Jeffreys' face.  But it seemed to me
he got better of his feelings with an effort and went on without heeding
what was said to him."

"That was not long before the accident?"

"About a quarter of an hour.  His run down the field at the last was
really a good piece of play, and every one seemed surprised.  But there
was any amount of room and time to get past Forrester instead of
charging right on to him.  It's possible, of course, he may have lost
his head and not seen what he was doing."

Mr Frampton shrugged his shoulders.

"Well," said he with a dejected look, "I wish you could have told me
anything but what you have.  At any rate, to-morrow morning the matter
must be faced and decided upon.  Jeffreys is unpopular in the school, is
he not?"

"Most unpopular," said Mr Freshfield.

"That will make our responsibility all the greater," said the head-
master.  "He will have every one's hand against him."

"And you may be quite certain he will do himself injustice.  He always
does.  But what of Forrester?"

"He is conscious, and has taken some nourishment; that is all I can say,
except, indeed," added Mr Frampton, with a groan, "that if he lives the
doctor says it will be as a cripple."

The day dragged wearily on, and night came at last.  Most of the boys,
worn-out with their last night's vigil, went to bed and slept soundly.
The doctor, too, leaving his patient in the charge of a trained nurse,
specially summoned, returned home, reporting hopefully of the case as he
departed.

In two studies at Bolsover that night, however, there was no rest.  Far
into the night Mr Frampton paced to and fro across the floor.  His
hopes and ambitions had fallen like a house of cards.  The school he had
been about to reform and regenerate had sunk in one day lower than ever
before.  There was something worse than dry-rot in it now.  But Mr
Frampton was a brave man; and that night he spent in arming himself for
the task that lay before him.  Yet how he dreaded that scene to-morrow!
How he wished that this hideous nightmare were after all a dream, and
that he could awake and find Bolsover where it was even yesterday
morning!  The other watcher was Jeffreys.  He had slept not a wink the
night before, and to-night sleep seemed still more impossible.  Had you
seen him as he sat there listlessly in his chair, with his gaunt, ugly
face and restless lips, you would have been inclined, I hope, to pity
him, cad as he was.  Hour after hour he sat there without changing his
posture, cloud after cloud chasing one another across his brow, as they
chased one another across the pale face of the moon outside.

At length, as it seemed, with an effort he rose to his feet and slipped
off his boots.  His candle had burned nearly out, but the moon was
bright enough to light his room without it, so he extinguished it and
softly opened the door.

The passage was silent, the only sounds being the heavy breathing
somewhere of a weary boy, and the occasional creaking of a board as he
crept along on tip-toe.

At the end of the passage he turned aside a few steps to a door, and
stood listening.  Some one was moving inside.  There was the rustle of a
dress and the tinkle of a spoon in a cup.  Then he heard a voice, and
oh, how his heart beat as he listened!

"I'm tired," it said wearily.

That was all.  Jeffreys heard the smoothing of a pillow and a woman's
soothing whisper hushing the sufferer to rest.

The drops stood in beads on his brow as he stood there and listened.

In a little all became quiet, and presently a soft, regular breathing
told him that some one was sleeping.

He put his hand cautiously to the handle and held it there a minute
before he dared turn it.  At last he did so, and opened the door a few
inches.  The breathing went regularly on.  Inch by inch he pushed the
door back till he could catch a glimpse in the moonlight of the bed, and
a dark head of hair on the pillow.  An inch or two more, and he could
see the whole room and the nurse dozing in the corner.  Stealthily, like
a thief, he advanced into the room and approached the bed.  The sufferer
was lying motionless, and still breathing regularly.

Jeffreys took a step forward to look at his face.  At that moment the
moonlight streamed in at the window and lit up the room.  Then, to his
terror, he noticed that the patient was awake, and lying with eyes wide
open gazing at the ceiling.  Suddenly, and before Jeffreys could
withdraw, the eyes turned and met his.  For an instant they rested there
vacantly, then a gasp and a shriek of horror proclaimed that Forrester
had recognised him.

In a moment he was outside the door, and had closed it before the nurse
started up from her slumber.

He had not been in his study a minute when he heard a sound of footsteps
and whispered voices without.  The boy's cry had reached the wakeful
ears of Mr Frampton, and already he was on his way to the sick-chamber.

Jeffreys sank down on his bed in an agony of terror and suspense.  The
boy's cry resounded in his ears and deafened him, till at last he could
endure it no longer.

Next morning, when the school was gathered in the hall, after prayers,
Mr Frampton, looking round him, missed the figure that was uppermost in
his thoughts.

"Will some one tell Jeffreys to come here?" he said.

Mr Freshfield went, but returned suddenly to announce that Jeffreys'
study was empty, and that a rope formed of sheets suspended from his
window made it evident he had escaped in the night and quitted Bolsover.



CHAPTER FOUR.

GONE AGAIN.

On the evening following Jeffreys' departure from Bolsover, a middle-
aged, handsome gentleman was sitting in his comfortable study in the
city of York, whistling pleasantly to himself.

The house in which he lived was a small one, yet roomy enough for an old
bachelor.  And what it wanted in size it made up for in the elegance and
luxury of its furniture and adornments.

Mr Halgrove was evidently a connoisseur in the art of making himself
comfortable.  Everything about him was of the best, and bespoke not only
a man of taste but a man of means.  The books on the shelves--and where
can you find any furniture to match a well-filled bookcase?--were well
chosen and well bound.  The pictures on the walls were all works of art
and most tastefully hung.  The knickknacks scattered about the room were
ornamental as well as useful.  Even the collie dog which lay luxuriously
on the hearthrug with one eye half open was as beautiful as he was
faithful.

Mr Halgrove whistled pleasantly to himself as he stirred his coffee and
glanced down the columns of the London paper.

If you had looked over his shoulder, you would have come to the
conclusion that Mr Halgrove's idea of what was interesting in a
newspaper and your own by no means coincided.

He was, in fact, reading the money article, and running his eye
skilfully among the mazes of the stocks and shares there reported.

Suddenly there was a ring at the hall door and a man's voice in the
hall.  Next moment the study door opened, and amid the frantic
rejoicings of Julius, John Jeffreys walked into the presence of his
guardian.  He was haggard and travel-stained, and Mr Halgrove, in the
midst of his astonishment, noticed that his boots were nearly in pieces.
Bolsover was fifty-five miles from York, and the roads were rough and
stony.  The guardian, whatever astonishment he felt at this unexpected
apparition, gave no sign of it in his face, as he sat back in his chair
and took several quiet whiffs of his weed before he addressed his
visitor.

"Ah!" said he, "you've broken up early."

"No, sir," said Jeffreys.  "Please may I have something to eat?"

"Help yourself to the bread and butter there," said Mr Halgrove,
pointing to the remains of his own tea, "and see if you can squeeze
anything out of the coffee-pot.  If not, ring for some more hot water.
Lie down, Julius!"

Jeffreys ate the bread and butter ravenously, and drank what was left in
the coffee-pot and milk-jug.

Mr Halgrove went on with his cigar, watching his ward curiously.

"The roads are rough for walking this time of the year," observed he.

"Yes," said Jeffreys; "I've walked all the way."

"Good exercise," said Mr Halgrove.  "How long did it take you?"

"I left Bolsover at half-past four this morning."

Mr Halgrove looked at his watch.

"Fifteen hours--a fairly good pace," said he.

A silence ensued, during which time guardian and ward remained eyeing
one another, the one curiously, the other anxiously.

"Why not sit down," said Mr Halgrove, when it became evident his ward
was not going to open the conversation, "after your long walk?"

Jeffreys dropped heavily into the chair nearest to him and Julius came
up and put his head between his knees.

"Do you often take country walks of this sort?" said the guardian.

"No, sir; I've run away from Bolsover."

Mr Halgrove raised his eyebrows.

"Indeed!  Was it for the fun of the thing, or for any special reason?"

"It was because I have killed a boy," said Jeffreys hoarsely.

It spoke volumes for Mr Halgrove's coolness that he took this alarming
announcement without any sign of emotion.

"Have you?" said he.  "And was that for fun, or for any special reason?"

"I didn't mean it; it was an accident," said Jeffreys.

"Is the story worth repeating?" asked the guardian, knocking the ash off
the end of the cigar, and settling himself in his chair.

Jeffreys told the story in a blundering, mixed-up way, but quite clearly
enough for Mr Halgrove.

"So you meant to run at him, though you didn't mean to kill him?" said
he, when the narrative was ended.

"I did not mean to kill him," repeated the boy doggedly.

"Of course it would not occur to you that you were twice his size and
weight, and that running over him meant--well manslaughter."

"I never thought it for a moment--not for a moment."

"Was the accident fatal, at once, may I ask?"

"No, sir; he was brought to the school insensible, and remained so for
more than twelve hours.  Then he became conscious, and seemed to be
doing well."

"A temporary rally, I suppose?" observed the guardian.

Jeffreys' mouth worked uneasily, and his pale brow became overcast
again.

"No, I believe if it hadn't been for me he might have recovered."

"Indeed," said the other, once more raising his eyebrows; "what further
attention did you bestow on him--not poison, I hope?"

"No, but I went to his room in the middle of the night and startled him,
and gave him a shock."

"Yes; playing bogey is liable to alarm invalids.  I have always
understood so," said Mr Halgrove drily.

"I didn't mean to startle him.  I fancied he was asleep, and just wanted
to see how he seemed to be getting on.  No one would tell me a word
about him," said Jeffreys miserably.

"And that killed him outright?"

"I'm afraid it must have," said Jeffreys.  "The doctor had said the
least shock would be fatal, and this was a very great shock."

"It would be.  You did not, however, wait to see?"

"No; I waited an hour or two, and then I ran away."

"Did you say good-bye to the head-master before leaving?"

"No; nobody knew of my going."

"Of course you left your address behind you, in case you should be
invited to attend the inquest."

"They know where I live," said Jeffreys.

"Indeed!  And may _I_ ask where you live?"

The ward's face fell at the question.

"Here, sir," faltered he.

"Pardon me, I think you are mistaken, John Jeffreys."

Jeffreys looked hard at his guardian, as if to ascertain whether or not
he spoke seriously.  His one longing at that moment was for food and
rest.  Since Saturday morning his eyes had never closed, and yet,
strange as it may seem, he could take in no more of the future than what
lay before him on this one night.  The sudden prospect now of being
turned out into the street was overwhelming.

"I think you are mistaken," repeated Mr Halgrove, tossing the end of
his cigar into the fireplace and yawning.

"But, sir," began Jeffreys, raising himself slowly to his feet, for he
was stiff and cramped after his long journey, "I've walked--"

"So you said," interrupted Mr Halgrove, incisively.  "You will be used
to it."

At that moment Jeffreys decided the question of his night's lodging in a
most unlooked-for manner by doing what he had never done before, and
what he never did again.

He fainted.

When he next was aware of anything he was lying in his own bed upstairs
in broad daylight, and Mr Halgrove's housekeeper was depositing a tray
with some food upon it at his side.  He partook gratefully, and dropped
off to sleep again without rousing himself enough to recall the events
of the past evening.  When, however, late in the afternoon, he awoke,
and went over in his mind the events of the last few days, a dismal
feeling of anxiety came over him and dispelled the comfort of his
present situation.  He got out of bed slowly and painfully, for he was
very stiff and footsore.  He knew not at what moment his guardian might
return to the unpleasant topic of last night's conversation, and he
resolved to end his own suspense as speedily as possible.  He took a
bath and dressed, and then descended resolutely but with sad misgivings
to the library.  Mr Halgrove was sitting where his ward had left him
yesterday evening.

"Ah," said he, as the boy entered, "early rising's not your strong
point, is it?"

"I only woke half an hour ago."

"And you are anxious, of course, to know whether you have been inquired
for by the police?" said the guardian, paring his nails.

Jeffreys' face fell.

"Has some one been?" he asked.  "Have you heard anything?"

"No one has been as yet except the postman.  He brought me a letter from
Bolsover, which will probably interest you more than it does me.  It's
there on the table."

Jeffreys took up a letter addressed in Mr Frampton's hand.

"Am I to read it?"

"As you please."

Jeffreys opened the letter and read:--

"Bolsover, _October_ 12.

"S.  Halgrove, Esq.

"Dear Sir,--I regret to inform you that your ward, John Jeffreys, left
Bolsover secretly last night, and has not up to the present moment
returned.  If he has returned to you, you will probably have learned by
this time the circumstances which led him to take the step he has.
(Here Mr Frampton briefly repeated the story of the football accident.)
The patient still lingers, although the doctors do not at present hold
out much hope of ultimate recovery.  I am not inclined to credit the
statement current in the school with regard to the sad event, that the
injury done to the small boy was not wholly due to accident.  Still,
under the grave circumstances, which are made all the more serious by
your ward's flight, I suggest to you that you should use your authority
to induce Jeffreys to return here--at any rate for as long as
Forrester's fate remains precarious; or, failing that, that you should
undertake, in the event of a legal inquiry being necessary, that he
shall be present if required.

"Faithfully yours,--

"T.  Frampton."

"Pleasant letter, is it not?" said Mr Halgrove as Jeffreys replaced it
in its envelope and laid it again on the table.

"I can't go back to Bolsover," said he.

"No?  You think you are not appreciated there?"

Jeffreys winced.

"But I will undertake to go there if--"

"If the coroner invites you, eh?"

"Yes," replied the boy.

"The slight difficulty about that is that it is I, not you, that am
asked to make the undertaking."

"But you will, won't you?" asked Jeffreys eagerly.

"I have the peculiarity of being rather particular about the people I
give undertakings for," said Mr Halgrove, flicking a speck of dust off
his sleeve; "it may be ridiculous, but I draw the line at homicide."

"You're a liar!" exclaimed the ward, in a burst of fury, which, however,
he repented of almost before the words had escaped him.

Mr Halgrove was not in the slightest degree disturbed by this undutiful
outbreak, but replied coolly,--

"In that case, you see, my undertaking would be worth nothing.  No.
What do you say to replying to Mr Frampton's suggestion yourself?"

"I will write and tell him I will go whenever he wants me."

"The only objection to that," observed the guardian, "will be the
difficulty in giving him any precise address, will it not?"

Jeffreys winced again.

"You mean to turn me adrift?" said he bluntly.

"Your perception is excellent, my young friend."

"When?"

Mr Halgrove looked at his watch.

"I believe Mrs Jessop usually locks up about eleven.  It would be a
pity to keep her up after that hour."

Jeffreys gulped down something like a sigh and turned to the door.

"Not going, are you?" said the guardian.  "It's early yet."

"I am going," replied the ward quietly.

"By the way," said Mr Halgrove, as he reached the door, "by the way,
John--"

Jeffreys stopped with his hand on the latch.

"I was going to say," said the guardian, rising and looking for his
cigar-case, "that the little sum of money which was left by your father,
and invested for your benefit, has very unfortunately taken to itself
wings, owing to the failure of the undertaking in which it happened to
be invested.  I have the papers here, and should like to show them to
you, if you can spare me five minutes."

Jeffreys knew nothing about money.  Hitherto his school fees had been
paid, and a small regular allowance for pocket-money had been sent him
quarterly by his guardian.  Now his guardian's announcement conveyed
little meaning to him beyond the fact that he had no money to count
upon.  He never expected he would have; so he was not disappointed.

"I don't care to see the papers," he said.

"You are a philosopher, my friend," said his guardian.  "But I have
sufficient interest in you, despite your financial difficulties, to
believe you might find this five-pound note of service on your travels."

"No, thank you," said Jeffreys, putting his hand behind his back.

"Don't mention it," said his guardian, returning it to his pocket.
"There is, when I come to think of it," added he, "a sovereign which
really belongs to you.  It is the balance of your last quarter's
allowance, which I had been about to send to you this week.  I would
advise you to take it."

"Is it really mine?"

"Pray come and look over the accounts.  I should like to satisfy you."

"If it is really mine I will take it," said the boy.

"You are sensible," said his guardian, putting it into his hand.  "You
are perfectly safe in taking it.  It is yours.  It will enable you to
buy a few postage stamps.  I shall be interested to hear of your
success.  Good-bye."

Jeffreys, ignoring the hand which was held out to him, walked silently
from the room.  Mr Halgrove stood a moment and listened to the
retreating footsteps.  Then he returned to his chair and rang the bell.

"Mrs Jessop," said he, "Mr Jeffreys is going on a journey.  Will you
kindly see he has a good meal before starting?"

Mrs Jessop went upstairs and found Jeffreys writing a letter.

"Master says you're going a journey, sir."

"Yes.  I shall be starting in half an hour."

"Can't you put it off till to-morrow, sir?"

"No, thanks.  But I want to finish this letter."

"Well, sir, there'll be some supper for you in the parlour.  It's
master's orders."

Jeffreys' letter was to Mr Frampton.

"Sir," he wrote, "I left Bolsover because I could not bear to be there
any longer.  I did not mean to injure Forrester so awfully, though I was
wicked enough to have a spite against him.  I am not a murderer, though
I am as bad as one.  If I could do anything to help Forrester get better
I would come, but I should only make everything worse.  My guardian has
turned me away, and I shall have to find employment.  But the
housekeeper here, Mrs Jessop, will always know where I am, and send on
to me if I am wanted.  I should not think of hiding away till I hear
that Forrester is better.  If he dies I should not care to live, so I
should be only too glad to give myself up.  I cannot come back to
Bolsover now, even if I wanted, as I have only a pound, and my guardian
tells me that is all the money I have in the world.  Please write and
say if Forrester is better.  I am too miserable to write more.

"Yours truly,--

"John Jeffreys."

Having finished this dismal letter, he packed up one or two of his
things in a small handbag and descended to the parlour.  There he found
an ample supper provided for him by the tender-hearted Mrs Jessop, who
had a pretty shrewd guess as to the nature of the "journey" that her
master's ward was about to take.  But Jeffreys was not hungry, and the
announcement that the meal was there by the "master's orders" turned him
against it.

"I can't eat anything, thank you," he said to Mrs Jessop, "you gave me
such a good tea only a little while ago."

"But you've a long journey, Master John.  Is it a long journey, sir?"

"I don't know yet," he said.  "But I want you to promise to send me on
any letter or message that comes, will you?"

"Where to?"

"To the head post-office, here."

"Here?  Then you're not going out of York?"

"Not at first.  I'll let you know when I go where to send on the
letters."

"Mr John," said the housekeeper, "the master's turned you away.  Isn't
that it?"

"Perhaps he's got a reason for it.  Good-bye, Mrs Jessop."

"Oh, but Mr John--"

But John interrupted her with a kiss on her motherly cheek, and next
moment was gone.



CHAPTER FIVE.

FREDDY AND TEDDY.

John Jeffreys, as he stood in the street that October evening, had no
more idea what his next step was to be than had Mr Halgrove or the
motherly Mrs Jessop.  He was a matter-of-fact youth, and not much given
to introspection; but the reader may do well on this particular occasion
to take a hasty stock of him as he walked aimlessly down the darkening
street.

He was nineteen years old.  In appearance he was particularly ugly in
face and clumsy in build.  Against that, he was tall and unusually
powerful whenever he chose to exert his strength.  In mind he was
reputed slow and almost stupid, although he was a good classical scholar
and possessed a good memory.  He was cursed with a bad and sometimes
ungovernable temper.  He was honest and courageous.  He rarely knew how
to do the right thing at the right time or in the right place.  And
finally he had a bad name, and believed himself to be a homicide.  Such
was the commonplace creature who, with a sovereign in his pocket and the
whole world before him, paced the streets of York that Tuesday night.

On one point his mind was made up.  He must remain in York for the
present, prepared at a moment's notice to repair to Bolsover, should the
dreaded summons come.  With that exception, as I have said, his mind was
open, and utterly devoid of ideas as to the future.

He directed his steps to the poor part of the town, not so much because
it was poor, as because it was farthest away from his guardian's.  He
resolved that to-night at any rate he would indulge in the luxury of a
bed, and accordingly, selecting the least repulsive-looking of a number
of tenements offering "Cheap beds for Single Men," he turned in and
demanded lodging.  To the end of his days he looked back on the "cheap
bed" he that night occupied with a shudder.  And he was by no means a
Sybarite, either.  Happily, he had still some sleep to make up; and
despite his foul bed, his unattractive fellow-lodgers, and his own
dismal thoughts, he fell asleep, in his clothes and with his bag under
his pillow, and slept till morning.

He partook of a cheap breakfast at a coffee-stall on one of the bridges,
and occupied the remainder of the time before the opening of business
houses in wandering about on the city walls, endeavouring to make up his
mind what calling in life he should seek to adopt.  He had not decided
this knotty point when the minster chimes struck ten, and reminded him
that he was letting the precious moments slip.  So he descended into the
streets, determined to apply for the first vacancy which presented
itself.

Wandering aimlessly on, he came presently upon a bookseller's shop,
outside which were displayed several trays of second-hand volumes which
attracted his attention.  Jeffreys loved books and was a voracious
reader, and in the midst of his wearisome search for work it was like a
little harbour of refuge to come upon a nest of them here.  Just,
however, as he was about to indulge in the delicious luxury of turning
over the contents of the tempting trays, his eye was attracted by a
half-sheet of note-paper gummed on to the shop window and bearing the
inscription, "Assistant wanted.  Apply within."

Next instant Jeffreys stood within.

"I see you want an assistant," said he to the old spectacled bookseller
who inquired his business.

"That's right."

"Will you take me?"

The man glanced up and down at his visitor and said doubtfully,--

"Don't know you--are you in the trade?"

"No, I've just left school."

"What do you know about books?"

"I love them," replied the candidate simply.

The bookseller's face lit up and shot a glow of hope into the boy's
heart.

"You love them.  I like that.  But take my advice, young fellow, and if
you love books, don't turn bookseller."

Jeffreys' face fell.

"I'm not afraid of getting to hate them," said he.

The man beamed again.

"What's your name, my lad?"

"John Jeffreys."

"And you've just left school?  What school?"

Alas! poor Jeffreys!  It cost him a struggle to utter the name.

"Bolsover."

"Bolsover, eh?  Do you know Latin?"

"Yes--and Greek," replied the candidate.

The bookseller took up a book that lay on the table.  It was an old and
valuable edition of Pliny's _Epistles_.

"Read us some of that."

Jeffreys was able fairly well to accomplish the task, greatly to the
delight of the old bookseller.

"Capital!  You're the first chap I ever had who could read Pliny off."

Jeffreys' face lit up.  The man spoke as if the thing was settled.

"How will fifteen shillings a week and your meals suit you?" said he.

"Perfectly!" replied the candidate.

"Hum! you've got a character, of course?"

Poor Jeffreys' face fell.

"Do you mean testimonials?"

"No.  You can refer to some one who knows you--your old schoolmaster,
for instance."

"I'm afraid not," faltered the boy.

The man looked perplexed.

"Couldn't get a character from him--why not?"

"Because I ran away from school."

"Oh, oh!  Did they ill-treat you, then, or starve you?  Come; better
tell the truth."

"No--it wasn't that.  It was because--" Jeffreys gave one longing look
at the shelves of beloved books, and an appealing glance at his
questioner--"It was because I--nearly killed a boy."

The man whistled and looked askance at his visitor.

"By accident?"

"Partly.  Partly not.  But I assure you--"

"That will do," said the man; "that's quite enough.  Be off!"

Jeffreys departed without another word.  Like Tantalus, the tempting
fruit had been within reach, and his evil destiny had come in to dash it
from his lips.  Was it wonderful if he felt disposed to give it up and
in sheer desperation go back to Bolsover?

The whole of the remainder of that day was spent in spiritless wandering
about the streets.  Once he made another attempt to obtain work, this
time at a merchant's office.  But again the inconvenient question of
character was raised, and he was compelled to denounce himself.  This
time his confession was even more unfeelingly received than at the
bookseller's.

"How dare you come here, you scoundrel?" exclaimed the merchant in a
rage.

"Don't call me a scoundrel!" retorted Jeffreys, his temper suddenly
breaking out.

"I'll call a policeman if you are not out of here in half a minute.
Here, you boys," added he, calling his six or eight clerks, "turn this
wretch out of the place.  Do you hear?"

Jeffreys spared them the trouble and stepped into the street, determined
to die before he laid himself open to such an indignity again.

His last night's experience at a common lodging-house did not tempt him
to seek shelter again now, and as it was a fine mild night even at that
time of year he trudged out of York into one of the suburbs, where at
least everything was clean and quiet.  He had the good fortune in a
country lane to come across a wagon laid up by the roadside, just inside
a field--a lodging far more tempting than that offered by Mr Josephs,
and considerably cheaper.  The fatigues and troubles of the day operated
like a feather-bed for the worn-out and dispirited outcast, and he slept
soundly, dreaming of Forrester, and the bookshop, and the dog Julius.

Next morning the weary search began again.  Jeffreys, as he trudged back
to the city, felt that he was embarked on a forlorn hope.  Yet a man
must live, and a sovereign cannot last for ever.  He passed a railway
embankment where a gang of navvies were hard at work.  As he watched
them he felt half envious.  They had work to do, they had homes to
return to at night, they had characters, perhaps.  Most of them were big
strong fellows like himself.  Why should he not become one of them?  He
fancied he could wheel a barrow, and ply a crowbar, and dig with a
spade, as well as any of them; he was not afraid of hard work any more
than they were, and the wages that kept a roof over their heads would
surely keep a roof over his.

As he sat on a bank by the roadside and watched them, he had almost
resolved to walk across to the foreman and ask for a job, when the sound
of voices close to him arrested him.

They were boys' voices, and their talk evidently referred to himself,
"Come along, Teddy," said one.  "He won't hurt."

"I'm afraid," said the other.  "He's so ugly."

"Perhaps that's how he gets his living--scaring the crows," said the
first speaker.

"He looks as if he meant to kill us."

"I shall fight him if he tries."

Jeffreys looked round and had a view of the valiant speaker and his
companion.

They were two neatly dressed little fellows, hand-in-hand, and evidently
brothers.  The younger--he who considered his life in danger--was about
eight, his intrepid brother being apparently about a year his senior.
They had little satchels over their shoulders, and parti-coloured
cricket caps on their little curly heads.  Their faces were bright and
shining, the knees of their stockings were elaborately darned, the
little hands were unmistakably ink-stained, and their pockets were
bulged out almost to bursting.

Such was the apparition which confronted the Bolsover "cad" as he sat
slowly making up his mind to become a labourer.

The younger brother drew back and began to cry, as soon as he perceived
that the terrible villain on the bank had turned and was regarding them.

"Freddy, Freddy, run!" he cried.

"I shan't," said Freddy with a big heave of his chest.  "I'm not
afraid."  The fluttering heart beneath that manly bosom belied the
words, as Freddy, dragging his brother by the hand, walked forward.

Jeffreys did not exactly know what to do.  Were he to rise and approach
the little couple the consequences might be disastrous.  Were he to
remain where he was or skulk away, he would be allowing them to believe
him the ruffian they thought him, and that lane would become a daily
terror to their little lives.  The only thing was to endeavour to make
friends.

"What are you afraid of?" said he, in as gentle a manner as he could.
"I won't hurt you."

The sound of his voice caused the smaller boy to scream outright, and
even the elder trembled a little as he kept himself full front to the
enemy.

"You little donkeys, I'm a schoolboy myself," said Jeffreys.  This
announcement had a magical effect.  The younger brother stopped short in
his scream, and Freddy boldly took two steps forward.

"Are you a boy?" inquired the latter.

"Of course I am.  I was in the top form.  I'm older than you, though."

"I'm ten," replied the proud owner of that venerable age.

"I'm nine in February," chimed in the still-fluttered junior.

"I'm about as old as you two put together.  How old's that, Freddy?"

"Nineteen," said Freddy.

By this time Jeffreys had gradually descended the bank and stood close
to the two small brothers.

"Bravo, young 'un, you can do sums, I see!"

"Compound division and vulgar fractions," said Freddy confidentially.

Jeffreys gave a whistle of admiration which won the heart of his hearer.

"Are you going to school now?" inquired the latter.

"No; I've left school," said Jeffreys, "last week."

"Last week! why, it's only the middle of the term.  Were you sent away?"

Jeffreys began to feel uncomfortable in the presence of this small
cross-examiner.

"I got into trouble and had to leave."

"I know why," said the younger brother, plucking up courage.

"Why?" inquired Jeffreys, with an amused smile.

"Because you were so ugly!"

Jeffreys laughed.  "Thank you," said he.

"Was it because you killed the master?" asked the more matter-of-fact
Freddy.

Poor Jeffreys winced before this random shot, and hastened to divert the
conversation.

"Whose school do you go to?" he inquired.

"Trimble's; we hate her," said the two youths in a breath.

"Why?  Does she whack you?"

"No; but she worries us, and young Trimble's worse still.  Do you know
the school?"

"No.  What's the name of the house?"

"Oh, Galloway House, in Ebor Road.  It wasn't so bad when Fison was
there," continued the open-hearted Freddy; "but now he's gone.
Trimble's a cad."

"We hate her," chimed in the original Teddy.

"We hope the new master will be like Fison, but I don't believe Trimble
can get any one to come," said Freddy.

Jeffreys pricked up his ears and asked a good many questions about the
school, which the youthful pair readily and gaily replied to, and then
suggested that if Trimble was such a cad the boys had better not be
late.

"Have some parliament cake?" said Freddy, opening his satchel and
producing a large square of crisp gingerbread.

Jeffreys had not the heart to refuse a little piece of this delicacy,
and enjoyed it more than the most sumptuous meal in an hotel.  Teddy
also insisted on his taking a bite out of his apple.

"Good-bye," said the little fellow, putting up his face in the most
natural manner for a kiss.  Jeffreys felt quite staggered by this
unexpected attention, but recovered his presence of mind enough to do
what was expected of him.  Freddy, on the other hand, looked rather
alarmed at his young brother's audacity, and contented himself with
holding out his hand.

"Good-bye, little chap," said Jeffreys, feeling a queer lump in his
throat and not exactly knowing which way to look.

Next moment the two little brothers were trotting down the road hand-in-
hand as gay as young larks.  Jeffreys thought no more about the navvies,
or the delights of a labourer's life.  A new hope was in him, and he
strolled slowly back into York wondering to himself if angels ever come
to men in the shape of little schoolboys.

It was still early when he reached the city.  So he spent sixpence of
his little store on a bath in the swimming baths, and another sixpence
on some breakfast.  Then, refreshed in body and mind, he called at the
post-office.  There was nothing for him there.  Though he hardly
expected any letter yet, his heart sunk as he thought what news might
possibly be on its way to him at that moment.  The image of Forrester as
he lay on the football field haunted him constantly, and he would have
given all the world even then to know that he was alive.  Hope, however,
came to his rescue, and helped him for a time to shake off the weight of
his heart, and address himself boldly to the enterprise he had in hand.

That enterprise the acute reader has easily guessed.  He would offer his
services to the worthy Mrs Trimble, _vice_ Mr Fison, resigned.  He
never imagined his heart could beat as quickly as it did when after a
long search he read the words--"Galloway House.  Select School for
Little Boys," inscribed on a board in the front garden of a small, old-
fashioned house in Ebor Road.

The sound of children's voices in the yard at the side apprised him that
he had called at a fortunate time.  Mrs Trimble during the play-hour
would in all probability be disengaged.

Mrs Trimble was disengaged, and opened the door herself.  Jeffreys
beheld a stoutish harmless-looking woman, with a face by no means
forbidding, even if it was decidedly unintellectual.

"Well, young man," said she.  She had been eating, and, I regret to say,
had not finished doing so before she began to speak.

"Can I see Mrs Trimble, please?" asked Jeffreys, raising his hat.  The
lady, finding her visitor was a gentleman, hastily wiped her mouth and
answered rather lest brusquely.

"I am the lady," said she.

"Excuse me," said Jeffreys, "I called to ask if you were in want of an
assistant teacher.  I heard that you were."

"How did you hear that, I wonder?  I suppose he's a friend of that
Fison.  Yes, young man, I am in want of an assistant."

"I should do my best to please you, if you would let me come," said
Jeffreys.  And then, anxious to avoid the painful subject of his
character, he added, "I have not taught in a school before, and I have
no friends here, so I can't give you any testimonials.  But I am well up
in classics and pretty good in mathematics, and would work hard, ma'am,
if you would try me."

"Are you a steady young man?  Do you drink?"

"I never touch anything but water; and I am quite steady."

"What wages do you expect?"

"I leave that to you.  I will work for nothing for a month till you see
if I suit you."

Mrs Trimble liked this.  It looked like a genuine offer.

"Are you good-tempered and kind to children?" she asked.

"I am very fond of little boys, and I always try to keep my temper."

His heart sank at the prospect of other questions of this kind.  But
Mrs Trimble was not of a curious disposition.  She knew when she liked
a young man and when she didn't, and she valued her own judgment as much
as anybody else's testimonials.

"You mustn't expect grand living here," she said.

"I was never used to anything but simple living," said he.

"Very well, Mr --"

"Jeffreys, ma'am."

"Mr Jeffreys, we'll try how we get on for a month; and after that I can
offer you a pound a month besides your board."

"You are very kind," said Jeffreys, to whom the offer seemed a
magnificent one.  "I am ready to begin work at once."

"That will do.  You'd better begin now.  Come this way to the
schoolroom."



CHAPTER SIX.

GALLOWAY HOUSE.

My business-like readers have, I dare say, found fault with me for
representing a business conference on which so much depended as having
taken place on the front doorstep of Galloway House, and without
occupying much more than five minutes in the transaction.  How did
Jeffreys know what sort of person Mrs Trimble was?  She might have been
a Fury or a Harpy.  Her house might have been badly drained.  Mr Fison
might have left her because he couldn't get his wages.  And what did
Mrs Trimble know about the Bolsover cad?  She never even asked for a
testimonial.  He might be a burglar in disguise, or a murderer, or a
child-eater.  And yet these two foolish people struck a bargain with one
another five minutes after their first introduction, and before even the
potatoes which Mrs Trimble had left on her plate when she went to the
door had had time to get cold.

I am just as much surprised as the reader at their rashness, which I can
only account for by supposing that they were both what the reader would
call "hard up."  Jeffreys, as we know, was very hard up; and as for Mrs
Trimble, the amount of worry she had endured since Mr Fison had left
was beyond all words.  She had had to teach as well as manage, the thing
she never liked.  And her son and assistant, without a second usher to
keep him steady, had been turning her hair grey.  For three weeks she
had waited in vain.  Several promising-looking young men had come and
looked at the place and then gone away.  She had not been able to enjoy
an afternoon's nap for a month.  In short, she was getting worn-out.
When, therefore, Jeffreys came and asked for the post, she had to put a
check on herself to prevent herself from "jumping down his throat."
Hence the rapid conference at the hall door, and the ease with which
Jeffreys got his footing in Galloway House.

"Come and have a bite of mutton," said Mrs Trimble, leading the way
into the parlour.  "Jonah and I are just having dinner."

Jonah, who, if truth must be told, had been neglecting his inner man
during the last five minutes in order to peep through the crack of the
door, and overhear the conference in the hall between his mother and the
stranger, was a vulgar-looking youth of about Jeffrey's age, with a
slight cast in his eye, but otherwise not bad-looking.  He eyed the new
usher as he entered with a mingled expression of suspicion and contempt;
and Jeffreys, slow of apprehension though he usually was, knew at a
glance that he had not fallen on a bed of roses at Galloway House.

"Jonah, this is Mr Jeffreys; I've taken him on in Fison's place.  My
son, Mr Jeffreys."

Jonah made a face at his mother, as much as to say, "I don't admire your
choice," and then, with a half-nod at Jeffreys, said,--

"Ah, how are you?"

"Jonah and I always dine at twelve, Mr Jeffreys," said Mrs Trimble,
over whom the prospect of the afternoon's nap was beginning to cast a
balmy sense of ease.  "You two young men will be good friends, I hope,
and look well after the boys."

"More than you do," said the undutiful Jonah; "they've been doing just
as they please the last month."

"It's a pity, Jonah, you never found fault with that before."

"What's the use of finding fault?  No end to it when you once begin."

"Well," observed the easy-going matron, "you two will have to see I
don't have occasion to find fault with you."

Jonah laughed, and asked Jeffreys to cut him a slice of bread.

Presently Mrs Trimble quitted the festive board, and the two ushers
were left together.

"Lucky for you," said young Trimble, "you got hold of ma and pinned her
down to taking you on on the spot.  What's she going to pay you?"

The question did not altogether please the new assistant, but he was
anxious not to come across his colleague too early in their
acquaintanceship.

"She pays me nothing the first month.  After that, if I suit, I'm to
have a pound a month."

"If you suit?  I suppose you know that depends on whether I like you or
not?"

"I hope not," blurted out Jeffreys--"that is," added he, seeing his
mistake, "I hope we shall _get_ on well together."

"Depends," said Trimble.  "I may as well tell you at once I hate stuck-
uppedness (this was a compound word worthy of a young schoolmaster).  If
you're that sort you'd better cry off at once.  If you can do your work
without giving yourself airs, I shall let you alone."

Jeffreys was strongly tempted after this candid avowal to take the
youthful snob's advice and cry off.  But the memory of yesterday's
miserable experiences restrained him.  He therefore replied, with as
little contempt as he was able to put into the words,--

"Thanks."

Trimble's quick ear detected the ill-disguised scorn of the reply.  "You
needn't try on that sort of talk," said he; "I can tell you plump, it
won't do.  You needn't think because ma took you on for the asking,
you're going to turn up your nose at the place!"

"I don't think so," said Jeffreys, struggling hard with himself.  "How
many boys are there here?"

"Forty-four.  Are you anything of a teacher?  Can you keep order?"

"I don't know; I haven't tried yet."

"Well, just mind what you're about.  Keep your hands off the boys; we
don't want manslaughter or anything of that sort here."

Jeffreys started.  Was it possible that this was a random shot, or did
Trimble know about Bolsover and young Forrester?  The next remark
somewhat reassured him.

"They're looking sharp after private schools now; so mind, hands off.
There's one o'clock striking.  All in!  Come along.  You'd better take
the second class and see what you can make of them.  Precious little ma
will put her nose in, now you're here to do the work."

He led the way down the passage and across a yard into an outhouse which
formed the schoolroom.  Here were assembled, as the two ushers entered,
some forty boys ranging in age from seven to twelve, mostly, to judge
from their dress and manners, of the small shopkeeper and farmer class.

The sound of Trimble's voice produced a dead silence in the room,
followed immediately by a movement of wonder as the big, ungainly form
of the new assistant appeared.  Jeffreys' looks, as he himself knew,
were not prepossessing, and the juvenile population of Galloway House
took no pains to conceal the fact that they agreed with him.

"Gordon," said Trimble, addressing a small boy who had been standing up
when they entered, "what are you doing?"

"Nothing, sir."

"You've no business to be doing nothing!  Stand upon that form for an
hour!"

The boy obeyed, and Trimble looked round at Jeffreys with a glance of
patronising complacency.

"That's the proper way to do with them," said he.  "Plenty of ways of
taking it out of them without knocking them about."

Jeffreys made no reply; he felt rather sorry for the weak-kneed little
youngster perched up on that form, and wondered if Mr Trimble would
expect him (Jeffreys) to adopt his method of "taking it out" of his new
pupils.

Just then he caught sight of the familiar face of Master Freddy, one of
his friends of the morning, who was standing devouring him with his eyes
as if he had been a ghost.  Jeffreys walked across the room and shook
hands with him.

"Well, Freddy, how are you?  How's Teddy?"

"I say," said Trimble, in by no means an amiable voice, as he returned
from this little excursion, "what on earth are you up to?  What did you
go and do that for?"

"I know Freddy."

"Oh, do you?  Freddy Rosher, you're talking.  What do you mean by it?"

"Please, sir, I didn't mean--"

"Then stay in an hour after school, and write four pages of your copy-
book."

It took all Jeffreys' resolution to stand by and listen to this
vindictive sentence without a protest.  But he restrained himself, and
resolved that Freddy should find before long that all his masters were
not against him.

"That's your fault," said Trimble, noticing the dissatisfied look of his
colleague.  "How are we to keep order if you go and make the boys break
rules?  Now you'd better get to work.  Take the second class over there
and give them their English history.  James the Second they're at.  Now,
you boys, first class, come up to me with your sums.  Second class, take
your history up to Mr Jeffreys.  Come along; look alive!"

Jeffreys thereupon found himself mobbed by a troop of twenty of the
youngest of the boys, and haled away to a desk at the far end of the
room, round which they congregated book in hand, and waited for him to
commence operations.

It was an embarrassing situation for the new usher.  He had never been
so fixed before.  He had often had a crowd of small boys round him,
tormenting him and provoking him to anger; but to be perched up here at
a desk, with twenty tender youths hanging on the first word which should
fall from his lips, was to say the least, a novel experience.  He
glanced up towards the far end of the room, in the hopes of being able
to catch a hint from the practised Jonah as to how to proceed.  But he
found Jonah was looking at him suspiciously over the top of his book,
and that was no assistance whatever.  The boys evidently enjoyed his
perplexity; and, emboldened by his recent act of friendliness to the
unlucky Freddy, regarded him benevolently.

"Will some one lend me a book?" at last said Jeffreys, half desperate.

A friendly titter followed this request.

"Don't you know it without the book?" asked one innocent, handing up a
book.

"I hope you do," said Jeffreys, blushing very much as he took it.
"Now," added he, turning to the reign of James II, "can any one tell we
what year King James II came to the throne?"

"Please, sir, that's not the way," interposed another irreverent
youngster, with a giggle.  "You've got to read it first, and then ask
us."

Jeffreys blushed again.

"Is that the way?" said he.  "Very well.  James II succeeded his brother
Charles in 1685.  One of his first acts on coming--"

"Oh, we're long past that," said two or three of his delighted audience
at a breath; "we've done to where Monmouth's head was cut off."

This was very uncomfortable for the new master.  He coloured up, as if
he had been guilty of a scandalous misdemeanour, and fumbled nervously
with the book, positively dreading to make a fresh attempt.  At last,
however, he summoned up courage.

"The death of this ill-fated nobleman was followed by a still more
terrible measure of retribution against those who had--"

"Please, sir, we can't do such long words; we don't know what that
means.  You've got to say it in easy words, not what's put in the book."

Jeffreys felt that all the sins of his youth were rising up against him
that moment.  Nothing that he had ever done seemed just then as bad as
this latest delinquency.

"After Monmouth's death they made it very--(hot, he was going to say,
but he pulled himself up in time), they made it very (whatever was the
word?)--very awkward for those who had helped him.  A cruel judge named
Jeffreys--"

That was a finishing stroke!  The reader could have sunk through the
floor as he saw the sensation which this denunciation of himself caused
among his audience.  There was not a shadow of doubt in the face of any
one of them as to his identity with the ferocious judge in question.
What followed he felt was being listened to as a chapter or
autobiography, and nothing he could say could now clear his character of
the awful stain that rested upon it.

"A cruel judge condemned more than three hundred persons--"

"You forgot to say his name, please, sir," they put in.

"Never mind his name; that is, I told you once, you should remember,"
stammered the hapless usher.

"I remember it.  Jeffreys, wasn't it, Mr Jeffreys?" said one boy
triumphantly.

"He condemned more than--"

"Who, Jeffreys?"

What was the use of keeping it up?

"Yes; this wicked judge, Jeffreys, condemned more than three hundred
people to death, just because they had helped Monmouth."

There was a low whistle of horror, as every eye transfixed the speaker.

"Did he repent?" asked one.

"It doesn't say so," said the wretched Jeffreys, turning over to the
next page in a miserable attempt to appear as if he was not involved in
the inquiry.

"How dreadful!" said another.

"Besides this, 849 people were transported."

"By Jeffreys, sir?"

"Yes," replied the owner of the name, finally throwing off all disguise
and giving himself up to his fate, "by this wicked Jeffreys."

"Yes, sir; and what else did he do?"

Trimble, as he looked every now and then down the room, was astonished
to notice the quiet which prevailed in the lower class, and the interest
with which every boy was listening to the new master.

He did not like it.  He couldn't manage to interest his class, and it
didn't please him at all that this casual newcomer should come and cut
him out before his face.

After a while he walked down the room and approached the assistant's
desk.

He was convinced this, unwonted order could not result from any
legitimate cause.

"You don't seem to be doing much work here, I must say," said he.  "Give
me the book, Mr Jeffreys: I want to see what they know of the lesson.
Where's the place?"

Jeffreys handed the book, putting his finger on the place.

Trimble glanced through a paragraph or two, and then pointing to a boy,
one of the least sharp in the class, said,--

"Now, Walker, what happened after Monmouth's death?"

"Oh, if you please, sir, a cruel judge, called Jeffreys, condemned--"

"That will do.  You, Rosher, how many people did he condemn to death?"

"More than three hundred, sir," answered Freddy promptly.

"What for, Bacon?"

"Because they helped Monmouth."

Trimble felt perplexed.  He never had a class that answered like this.
He tried once more.

"Pridger, what else did he do?"

"He had 849 transported, sir."

Trimble shut the book.  It was beyond him.  If Pridger had said 848 or
850, he could have made something of it.  But it floored him completely
to find the second class knowing the exact number of convicts in one
given year of English history.

"Don't let me catch any of you wasting your time," he said.  "Farrar,
what do you mean by looking about you, sir?  Stand on the form for half
an hour."

"Farrar has been very quiet and attentive all the afternoon," said
Jeffreys.

"Stand on the form an hour, Farrar," said Trimble, with a scowl.

Jeffreys' brow darkened as he watched the little tyrant strut off to his
class.  How long would he be able to keep hands off him?

The rest of the afternoon passed uneventfully.  An unconscious bond of
sympathy had arisen between the new master and his pupils.  His
historical importance invested him with a glamour which was nearly
heroic; and his kind word on Farrar's behalf had won him an amount of
confidence which was quick in showing itself.  "We like you better than
Fison, though he was nice," said Bacon, as the class was about to
separate.

"I hope Trimble won't send you away," said another.

"I wish you'd condemn young Trimble to death, or transport him, Mr
Jeffreys," said a third confidentially.

"Good-bye, Mr Jeffreys," said Freddy, with all the confidence of an old
friend.  "Did you like that parliament cake?"

"Awfully," said Jeffreys.  "Good-bye."

Every one insisted on shaking hands with him, greatly to his
embarrassment; and a few minutes later the school was scattered, and
Jeffreys was left to go over in his mind his first day's experience.

On the whole he was cheerful.  His heart warmed to these simple little
fellows, who thought none the worse of him for being ugly and clumsy.
With Mrs Trimble, too, he anticipated not much difficulty.  Young
Trimble was a rock ahead undoubtedly, but Jeffreys would stand him as
long as he could, and not anticipate the day, which he felt to be
inevitable, when he would be able to stand him no longer.

"Well, Mr Jeffreys," said Mrs Trimble, as the dame and her two
assistants sat down to tea, "how do you manage?"

"Pretty well, thank you, ma'am," replied Jeffreys; "they are a nice lot
of little boys, and I found them very good and quiet."

"Of course you would, if you let them do as they like," said Jonah.
"You'll have to keep them in, I can tell you, if you expect to keep
order."

It did occur to Jeffreys that if they were good without being kept in,
Jonah ought to be satisfied, but he was too wise to embark on a
discussion with his colleague, and confined his attentions to Mrs
Trimble.

The meal being ended, he said--

"Will you excuse me, ma'am, if I go into the city for about an hour?  I
have to call at the post-office for letters."

"Look here," said Jonah, "we don't let our assistants out any time they
like.  It's not usual.  They ought to stay here.  There's plenty of work
to do here."

"It's very important for me to get the letters, Mrs Trimble," said
Jeffreys.

"Well, of course, this once," said the matron, glancing uneasily at her
son; "but, as Jonah says, we like our young men to stay in, especially
at night.  We parted with Mr Fison because he was not steady."

"Thank you, ma'am," said Jeffreys; "if the letters have come to-day I
shall not have to trouble you again.  Can I do anything for you in
town?"

"That chap won't do," said Jonah to his mother when at last Jeffreys
started on his expedition.

"I think he will; he means well.  It wouldn't do, Jonah," said the good
lady, "to have all the trouble again of finding a young man.  I think
Mr Jeffreys will do."

"I don't," said Jonah sulkily, taking up a newspaper.

Jeffreys meanwhile, in a strange frame of mind, hurried down to the
post-office.  The day's adventures seemed like a dream to him as he
walked along, and poor Forrester seemed the only reality of his life.

Would there be a letter?  And what news would it bring him?  During the
last twelve hours a new hope and object in life had opened before him.
But what was it worth, if, after all, at this very moment Forrester
should be lying lifeless at Bolsover?

"Have you any letter for John Jeffreys?" he asked; but his heart beat so
loud that he scarcely heard his own voice.

The man, humming cheerily to himself, took a batch of letters out of a
pigeon-hole and began to turn them over.  Jeffreys watched him
feverishly, and marvelled at his indifference.

"What name did you say--Jones?"

"No, Jeffreys--John Jeffreys."

Again he turned over the bundle, almost carelessly.  At length he
extracted a letter, which he tossed onto the counter.

"There you are, my beauty," said he.

Jeffreys, heeding nothing except that it was addressed in Mr Frampton's
hand, seized the missive and hastened from the office.

At the first shop window he stood and tore it open.

"My dear Jeffreys,--I was glad to hear from you, although your letter
gave me great pain.  It would have been wiser in you to return here,
whatever your circumstances might be; wiser still would it have been had
you never run away.  But I do not write now to reproach you.  You have
suffered enough, I know.  I write to tell you of Forrester."

Jeffreys gave a gasp for breath before he dare read on.

"The poor fellow has made a temporary rally, but the doctors by no means
consider him out of danger.  Should he recover, which I fear is hardly
probable, I grieve to say the injuries he has received would leave him a
cripple for life.  There is an injury to the spine and partial
paralysis, which, at the best, would necessitate his lying constantly on
his back, and thus being dependent entirely on others.  If he can bear
it, he is to be removed to his home in a day or two.  He has asked about
you, and on my telling him that I was writing to you, said, `Tell him I
know it was only an accident.'  I am sure that this letter will grieve
you; I wish I could say anything which will help you.  May God in His
mercy bring good to us all out of this sorrow!  As for yourself, I hope
that your guardian's resentment will be short-lived, and that you will
let me hear of your welfare.  Count on me as a friend, in spite of all.

"Yours always,--

"T.  Frampton."

"In spite of all!" groaned poor Jeffreys, as he crushed the letter into
his pocket.  "Will no one have pity on me?"



CHAPTER SEVEN.

WHAT A DAY FOR JONAH!

The six months which followed Jeffreys' introduction into the classical
atmosphere of Galloway House passed uneventfully for him, and not
altogether unpleasantly.  He had, it is true, the vision of young
Forrester always in his mind, to drag him down, whenever he dwelt upon
it, into the bitterest dejection; and he had the active spite and
insolence of Jonah Trimble daily to try his temper and tax his patience.

Otherwise he was comfortable.  Mrs Trimble, finding him steady and
quiet, treated him kindly when she had her own way, and indifferently
when her son was with her.  The boys of the second class maintained the
mysterious respect they had conceived for him on the day of his arrival,
and gave him wonderfully little trouble or difficulty.

He had his evenings for the most part to himself, and even succeeded,
after something like a battle-royal with the Trimbles, in carrying his
point of having one "evening out" in the week.  It nearly cost him his
situation, and it nearly cost Jonah a bone-shaking before the question
was settled.  But Jeffreys could be stubborn when he chose, and stood
out grimly on this point.  Had it not been for this weekly respite,
Galloway House would have become intolerable before a month was over.

He heard occasionally from Mr Frampton; but the one question which
would have interested him most was generally passed over.  Mr Frampton
probably considered that any reference to Forrester would be painful to
his correspondent, and therefore avoided it.  At last, however, in reply
to Jeffreys' entreaty to know where the boy was and how he was
progressing, the head-master wrote:--

"I really cannot tell you what you want to know about Forrester, as I
have heard nothing of him.  His father, as you know, is an officer in
India, and his only relative in England was his grandmother, to whose
house at Grangerham he was removed on leaving here.  The last I heard
was a month after he had left here, when he was reported still to be
lingering.  His grandmother, so I heard, was very ill.  He himself, as a
last hope, was to be removed to a hospital (I could not hear which) to
receive special treatment.  Since then--which is five months ago--I have
heard nothing, and my last letter to Grangerham was returned by the
Dead-Letter Office.  I wish I could tell you more.  You may depend on my
doing so should I hear of him again," etc.

It is hardly to be wondered at after this that poor Jeffreys felt the
weight upon him heavier than ever.  As long as he had known where
Forrester was, and had the hope of hearing from time to time how he
fared, he had been able to buoy himself up with the hope of some day
making up to his victim for the injury he had inflicted; but when,
suddenly, Forrester dropped hopelessly out of his life, the burden of
his conscience grew intolerable.

He struggled hard, by devoting himself to his boys and by hard private
study in his leisure hours, to drive the haunting memory away, but the
effort succeeded only for a time.  At night, as he lay in bed, unable to
escape from himself, the vision of that pale face and that cry of terror
hardly once left him till merciful sleep came to his rescue.  And by
day, when his small pupils vexed him, or the spiteful Jonah tempted him
to revenge, the thought of Forrester cowed him into submission, and left
him no choice but to endure what seemed to be his penance.

"Ma," said Mrs Trimble's hopeful, one afternoon after school had
closed, "you've been nicely taken in over that Jeffreys, I can tell
you."

"What!" said the lady.  "He doesn't drink, does he?"

"Don't know.  But there's something queer about him, and I mean to find
it out.  I'm not going to let it go on, I can tell you."

"Why, what's he been doing, Jonah?"

"Doing?  You must go about with your eyes shut if you don't see he's
been sulking ever since he came here.  I tell you there's something
wrong."

"Oh, don't say that, Jonah."

"You never took a character with him, did you?"

"No; he hadn't been in a place before."

"Depend on it, ma, he's skulking.  He's done something, and finds this a
convenient place to hide away in."

"But, Jonah, he's never shown any signs of not being all right.  He's
very kind to the boys, and keeps them in wonderful order, better than
you do almost."

Jonah did not like this, because he knew it was true.  His boys were
neither fond of him nor obedient to his control, and the fact that
Jeffreys' boys were both was additional proof that there was something
wrong.

"Do you suppose he can't manage to take you in, ma?  Of course, any one
could."

"But he makes himself very pleasant, and studies, and keeps very quiet
out of school."

"Of course.  Isn't that what I tell you?  He's hiding.  What do you
suppose he skulks away into town for once a week--eh?"

"Not to drink, I do hope?" said the lady.

"Whatever it is, I mean to get to the bottom of it, for the sake of the
school," said Jonah.  "Fancy the mess we'd get into if it got known we
had a shady character here as a teacher!"

"But, Jonah, dear, it's only suspicion.  He may be all right."

"Oh, anything _may_ be," retorted the philosophic Jonah.  "The thing
is--is it?"

As Mrs Trimble was unable to answer this question, she retired from the
discussion, and hoped devoutly nothing was going to happen which would
necessitate her doing more work about the school than she at present
did.

The unconscious Jeffreys meanwhile was upstairs, washing himself before
starting for his weekly "evening out."  He had more than usual before
him on this particular evening, as, besides calling at the post-office--
an errand he never missed--he had discovered another old bookshop across
the river which kept open till seven o'clock.  And after that he had
promised Freddy and Teddy, with whom from the first he had kept up a
warm friendship, to call up at their house and help them mend their
tricycle.  With this full programme before him, he lost no time in
starting on his travels; little dreaming that the quick pace at which he
strode along gave unwonted exercise to Mr Jonah Trimble, who, animated
by an amiable curiosity, dogged his footsteps at a respectful distance.

It was about five o'clock when Jeffreys reached the post-office.  The
clerk knew him by this time, and this evening handed him a letter
without being asked.  It was a short friendly line from Mr Frampton
with no news--at any rate about Forrester; and Trimble, as he watched
him emerge from the office, letter in hand, and haggard in face, chalked
down in in his own mind a first clue as to the mystery that was
exercising him.

From the post-office Jeffreys strolled leisurely down the streets toward
the bridge, stopping to look into some of the shops by the way, and
occasionally making Trimble's heart jump by looking behind him.

In due time he pulled up at the bookseller's shop.  Trimble saw the
proprietor welcome his visitor with a nod which bespoke an acquaintance
of some standing.  He saw Jeffreys turning over the contents of some of
the trays, taking up a book now and then and examining it, and sometimes
propping himself up against the doorpost and reading page after page.
It was not very entertaining work for the spy; but curiosity is patient,
and Jonah as he watched the unconscious reader at a safe distance
fortified himself by the conviction that he was watching the working-out
of some deep-laid plot.

Presently he saw Jeffreys disappear into the shop, and what was his
amazement, when presently he "casually" passed the door, to see him
seated with the bookseller at a table earnestly poring over and
discussing a small faded sheet of paper which lay between them!  Trimble
would have given worlds to know what the mysterious document was, and
what villainy was brewing.  Had he known it, he might not have stood out
there in the evening air quite as patiently as he did.  For the
mysterious document happened to be nothing but an old tattered and torn
Commonwealth tract which Jeffreys had discovered folded up between the
leaves of an ancient volume of poetry, and which he and his friend the
bookseller were spending a very agreeable half-hour in piecing together
and deciphering.

About seven o'clock Jeffreys rose to go, pocketing the precious relic,
which his friend had given him; and Trimble, having carefully noted down
the name of the shop and the personal appearance of the suspicious
bookseller, followed gingerly back across the bridge.  The streets were
getting less crowded, and Jonah had increasing difficulty in keeping
himself concealed as he crawled along on the opposite side of the way
some thirty or forty yards in the rear of his man.

Just as Jeffreys was crossing the space opposite the grand front of the
minster a dog sprang forward to meet him with every token of joy.  It
was Julius, and Jeffreys knew that the master could not be very far
away.  He turned round for a moment, as though he meditated flight, and
gave Jonah a spasm by the unexpected movement.  But before he could
decide Mr Halgrove strolled pleasantly round the corner, and nodded to
him as if he and his ward had not parted five minutes before.

"Ah, John, fine evening for a stroll.  On your way home?"

Mr Halgrove till that moment had not had the faintest idea that his
ward was still in York.

"No," said Jeffreys, patting the dog's head and looking very much the
reverse of comfortable.

"They say the front of the minster is beginning to crumble at places,"
said Mr Halgrove, looking up at the noble pile before them; "I hope
it's not true.  Are you much here?"

"No.  I live in another part of the town."

"Very odd my meeting you," said Mr Halgrove.  "I was thinking of you
only to-day.  I had a letter from Mr Frampton."

"Indeed, sir--about Forrester?"

"About--oh, your little victim?  Oddly enough, it was not.  It was to
remind me that your last half-term's fees were not paid.  Don't you
think it would be judicious to clear up this little score?  Looks bad,
you know--to run away with score against you."

Jeffrey's face turned pale.  He had at least supposed that up to the
time of his expulsion from his guardian's house Mr Halgrove would have
considered himself responsible for his maintenance.

"I never dreamt," he faltered.  "How much is it?"

"Quite a little sum, isn't it?  Come, you were last at school.  Too bad
to pose me with compound division at my time of life.  Half a term at
£40 a year?"

"Seven pounds!" gasped Jeffreys.

"Not quite, £6 13 shillings, 4 pence.  Fancy my being better at mental
arithmetic than you!"

"I haven't got any money.  I only get a pound a month and my board."

"My dear boy, I congratulate you.  Twelve pounds a year!  Now, wasn't it
a pity you didn't take that £5 note I offered you?  Suppose you take it
now!"

Mr Halgrove put his hand to his pocket and took out his purse.

"No!" exclaimed Jeffreys, in a tone that made Trimble, who was busy
engaged in inspecting the architecture of the minster from behind a deep
buttress close to the speaker, jump--"I'd sooner die!"

"Don't do that, my dear fellow, don't do that," said Mr Halgrove, with
a smile which belied the anger he felt at the refusal; "rather than that
I'll keep the money.  I have no wish to commit a murder.  It's not in my
line.  That's one point in which you and I differ, isn't it?"

Jeffreys made as though he would spring upon him.  What was it checked
him?  Was it the solemn minster--was it a dread of his guardian's
superior strength--was it fear of punishment?  Or was it a momentary
glimpse of a pale face in a moonlit room far away, which took the spirit
out of him and made his arm drop at his side?

"Well, I won't keep you," said Mr Halgrove, who had also for a moment
looked uneasy.  "I dare say you are in a hurry like myself.  The fact
is, I am going a trip to America next week and have a good deal to
attend to.  That makes me doubly glad to have met you.  Good-bye, my
dear boy, good-bye.  Come, Julius."

Julius as he slunk off at his master's heels, and heard the smothered
oath which escaped Mr Halgrove's lips as soon as he found himself
alone, looked round wistfully and pitifully, and wished he were allowed
to go where he pleased.

Jeffreys walked on like a man in a dream.  For six months he had been
working out what had been to him a penance, hoping to live down his bad
name, even if he could never win a good.

But now in a moment it seemed as if the labour of those patient months
had been dashed to the ground, and his guardian's bitter words branded
themselves on his heart as he paced on out of the shadow of the noble
minster into the dusk of the city.

Trimble, nearly bursting with excitement--for he had overheard all the
latter part of the conversation--crept after him.  What a time he was
having!

Jeffreys bent his steps almost aimlessly out of the city into the
country beyond.  It was only half-past seven, and Teddy and Freddy were
expecting him.  He had not the heart to fail them, though he would
gladly have remained solitary that evening.  The Roshers lived in a
small cottage some distance down the lane in which six months ago
Jeffreys had first encountered the sunshine of their presence.  How long
ago it seemed now!  Ah! that was the very bank on which he sat; and
there beyond was the railway embankment at which the navvies were
working, now finished and with the grass growing up its sides.

Trimble's little heart jumped to his mouth as he saw the man he was
following stop abruptly and begin to climb the bank.  He was too close
behind to be able to turn back.  All he could do was to crouch down in
the ditch and "lie low."  He heard Jeffreys as he gained the top of the
bank sigh wearily; then he seemed to be moving as if in search of a
particular spot; and then the lurker's hair stood on end as he heard the
words, hoarsely spoken,--

"It was this very place."

What a day Jonah was having!  After a quarter of an hour's pause, during
which the patient Jonah got nearly soaked to the skin in his watery
hiding-place, Jeffreys roused himself and descended into the lane.  Any
one less abstracted could not have failed to detect the scared face of
the spy shining out like a white rag from the hedge.  But Jeffreys
heeded nothing and strode on to Ash Cottage.

Long before he got there, Freddy and Teddy, who had been on the look-out
for him for an hour, scampered down to meet him.

"Hurrah, Jeff!" shouted Teddy (I grieve to say that these irreverent
brethren had long ago fallen into the scandalous habit of calling their
teacher by a familiar contraction of his proper name, nor had the master
rebuked them).  "Hurrah, Jeff! we were afraid you weren't coming."

"The tricycle won't go," said Freddy; "we've pulled it all to bits, and
tried to make it right with a hammer, but it's very bad."

"It's glorious you've come to do it.  Isn't Jeff a brick, Teddy?"

"Rather--and, oh, did you bring any oil?  We used all ours up."

"We've got a screw-driver, though!" said Freddy.

"And lots of string!" shouted Teddy.

"You _are_ a brick to come and do it," shouted both.

Where in the world is there a tonic equal to the laugh of a light-
hearted grateful little boy?  How could Jeffreys help forgetting his
trouble for a time and devoting himself heart and soul to the business
of that tricycle?  Trimble, as he dodged along after them perplexed and
puffing, could hardly believe his eyes as he saw his morose colleague
suddenly throw off the burden that was on him and become gay.

"Come along, little chaps--let's see what we can do," said Jeffreys, as
the three strode out to the cottage.  "Where is he?"

"In the shed.  We've got a candle."

Trimble saw them disappear into the garden, and, guided by their cheery
voices, soon discovered the back of the shed in which the momentous
surgical operation was to take place.  It backed on the road, and might
have been built for Trimble's purpose.  For the woodwork abounded in
most convenient cracks, through which a spy might peep and listen
luxuriously.  What a day Jonah was having!

The Roshers conducted their friend into the place like anxious relatives
who conduct a physician into a sick-chamber.  The poor patient lay on
the floor in a very bad way.  Two wheels were off, the axle was bent,
the wire spokes were twisted, the saddle was off, and the brake was all
over the place.

Jeffreys shook his head and looked grave.

"It's a bad job," said he.

"You see, we were giving mother a ride on it, and she's too heavy--
especially going downhill.  She thought we were holding it, but it got
away.  We yelled to her to put on the brake, but she didn't, and it went
bang into the wall."

"And your mother?" inquired Jeffreys, somewhat anxiously.

"Oh, her face is much better now.  The doctor says there'll be hardly
any marks left after all."

It was a long business putting the unlucky tricycle in order.  Jeffreys
was not a mechanic.  All he could do was to put the parts together in a
makeshift way, and by straightening some of the bent parts and greasing
some of the stiff parts restore the iron horse into a gloomy semblance
of his old self.

The boys were as grateful and delighted as if he had constructed a new
machine out of space; and when at last a trial trip demonstrated that at
any rate the wheels would go round and the saddle would carry them,
their hearts overflowed.

"You are a real brick, Jeff," said Teddy; "I wish I could give you a
hundred pounds!"

"I don't want a hundred pounds," said Jeffreys, with a smile; "if you
and Freddy and I are good friends, that's worth a lot more to me."

"Why?" demanded Freddy; "are we the only friends you've got?"

Jeffreys looked out of the window and said,--

"Not quite--I've got one more."

"Who--God?" asked the boy naturally.

Poor Jeffreys!  He sometimes forgot that Friend, and it startled and
humbled him to hear the little fellow's simple question.

"Of course, he's got Him," interposed Teddy, without giving him time to
reply.  "But who else, Jeff?"

"I saw him not long ago," said Jeffreys.  "His name's Julius."

"You don't like him more than us, do you?" asked Teddy rather anxiously.

"Not a quarter as much, old chap," said Jeffreys.

There was a pause, during which Trimble chuckled to think how little the
speaker guessed into whose ears he was betraying the name of his
villainous accomplice!  Presently, however, he started to hear the sound
of his own name.

"Jeff," said Teddy, "isn't Mr Trimble a beast?"

"Let's talk about something pleasant," suggested Jeffreys, by way of
begging the question.

"Let's talk about hanging him; that would be pleasant," said Teddy.

"Would you be sorry if he was dead?" demanded Teddy, in his matter-of-
fact way.  "I say, Jeff, wouldn't it be jolly if we could kill everybody
we hated?"

"Wouldn't it be jolly if every little boy who talked like a little
donkey were to have his ears boxed?" said Jeffreys.

"I wish he'd been on the tricycle instead of mother," continued Teddy,
with a sigh of content at the bare idea.

"Teddy, you are not as nice a little boy as I thought when you talk like
that," said Jeffreys.  "Come and let's have one more turn on the
machine, and then I must hurry back, or Mrs Trimble will think I'm
lost."

Jeffreys got back to Galloway House about ten o'clock, and found Jonah
sitting up for him.

"So you _have_ come back," said that individual pompously.  "I hope
you've enjoyed your evening out."

"Yes," said Jeffreys, "pretty well."

"Oh!" said Jonah to himself, as he went up to bed, bursting with
excitement.  "If he only knew what I know!  Let me see--"

And then he went over in his mind the events of that wonderful evening,
the visit to the post-office and the horrified look as he came out
letter in hand; the mysterious conference with the bookseller, doubtless
over this very letter.  And how artfully he had been pretending to look
at the books outside till he saw no one was looking!  Then, the secret
meeting with his accomplice in the minster yard--Mr Julius, yes, that
was the name he had himself told the boys--and the altercation over the
money, doubtless the booty of their crime, and Mr Julius's denunciation
of Jeffreys as a murderer!  Whew!  Then that lonely country walk, and
that search on the bank, and that exclamation, "It was this very place!"
Whew!  Jonah had tied a bit of his bootlace on the hedge just under the
spot, and could find it again within a foot.  Then the rencontre with
the two boys and the strange, enigmatical talk in the shed, pointing to
the plot of a new crime of which he--Trimble--was to be the victim.  Ha,
ha!--and the business over that tricycle too, in the candle-light.
Jonah could see through that.  He could put a spoke in a wheel as well
as Jeffreys.

Two things were plain.  He must get hold of the letter; and he must
visit the scene of the crime _with a spade_!  Then--

Jonah sat up half the night thinking of it, till at last the deep
breathing of his colleague in the next room reminded him that now at any
rate was the time to get the letter.  He had seen Jeffreys crush it into
his side pocket after leaving the bookseller's and he had heard him
before getting into bed just now hang his coat on the peg behind the
door.  And it was hot, and the door was open.

What a day Jonah was having!

Fortune favours the brave.  It was a work of two minutes only.  The
pocket was there at his hand before he had so much as put a foot in the
room.  And there was the letter--two letters--and not a board creaked or
a footstep sounded before he was safe back in his own room with the
documentary evidence before him.

There was only one letter after all.  The other paper was a rubbishing
rigmarole about General Monk and the Parliament 1660.  This Jonah tossed
contemptuously into the grate.  But the other letter, how his flesh
crept as he read it!  It had no date, and was signed only in initials.

"Dear J.  There is no news.  I can understand your trouble and remorse,
and this uncertainty makes it all the more terrible to you.  I know it
is vain to say to you, `Forget,' but do not write about poor Forrester's
blood being on your head!  Your duty is to live and redeem the past.
Let the dead bury their dead, dear fellow, and turn your eyes forward,
like a brave man.  Yours ever, J.F."

Do you wonder if Jonah's blood curdled in his veins--"remorse,"
"uncertainty," "poor Forrester," "his blood on your head," eh? "bury
your dead"!

Whew!  _What_ a day Jonah had had, to be sure!



CHAPTER EIGHT.

I KNOW A BANK.

Jonah Trimble may not have been a genius of the first water, but he was
at least wise enough to know that he could not both have his cake and
eat it.  His discovery of Jeffreys' villainy was a most appetising cake,
and it wanted some little self-denial to keep his own counsel about it,
and not spoil sport by springing his mine until all the trains were
laid.

Another consideration, moreover, which prevented his taking immediate
action was that Jeffreys was extremely useful at Galloway House, and
could not be spared just yet--even to the gallows.  In a few months'
time, when the good name of the school, which had rapidly risen since he
came upon the scene, was well established, things might be brought to a
climax.  Meanwhile Jonah Trimble would keep his eye on his man, read his
_Eugene Aram_, and follow up his clues.

Jeffreys awoke on the following morning with a feeling of oppression on
his mind which for a little time he could not define.  It was not his
guardian's words, bitter as they had been; it was not the insolence of
his fellow-usher, intolerable as that was becoming.  When at last his
wandering thoughts came in and gave the trouble shape, he found it took
a much more practical form.  He was in debt seven pounds to Mr
Frampton.  It never occurred to him to wonder whether Mr Halgrove had
been telling him the truth or not, nor to his unbusinesslike mind did it
occur that his guardian, as the trustee responsible for what money he
once had, was liable for the debt, however much he might like to
repudiate it.

No; all he knew was that Mr Frampton was owed seven pounds, and that he
himself had nothing, or next to nothing, to pay.  By hard saving during
the six months he had managed to save a sovereign, but of this only last
week he had spent the greater part in boots and clothing.  Now his
worldly wealth consisted of four shillings!  He was down early that
morning, and was relieved to find that Mrs Trimble was in the parlour
alone, without her son.  The good lady was in an amiable mood.  The
school was getting on, and something told her that it was not greatly
due either to her own exertions or the influence of Jonah.  Therefore,
being a mathematical old lady, she subtracted herself and Jonah from the
present school staff, and came to the conclusion that Jeffreys must have
had a hand in the improvement.

"Young man," said she, in reply to her assistant's greeting, "you've
been with me six months.  Are you comfortable?"

"Pretty well," said Jeffreys.  "I'm very fond of my boys, and I always
get on comfortably with you."

The mathematical dame once more went to work, and answered, "You and
Jonah don't hit it, I suppose.  You don't know Jonah, young man.  He may
not be easily satisfied, but he's a gentleman."

"I'm sure," said Jeffreys, to whom this tribute seemed the last he
should expect to hear bestowed on his amiable fellow-usher, "I try to
get on with him, and shall go on trying."

"That's right," said Mrs Trimble, once more shuddering at the prospect
of being left short-handed.  "What I was going to say to you was, that
now you've been here six months, and are not a forward young man, and
don't drink, I shall raise your wages, and give you thirty shillings a
month instead of twenty.  How will that suit you?"

"You are very kind," said the grateful Jeffreys, with a tremble in his
voice which quite moved the old lady's heart; "it will be very
acceptable."

"Very good.  You need not mention it to Jonah," added she hurriedly, as
that young gentleman's footsteps were heard that moment on the stairs.

The only difference which the unconscious Jeffreys was aware of in the
conduct of Jonah Trimble towards himself was that the young gentleman
was a trifle more hectoring and a trifle more facetious than before.

But even to the little mind of Jonah Trimble it had been revealed that
at present it would be extremely awkward for Galloway House if Jeffreys
went "on strike."  He was a good teacher and manager; and his boys were
devoted to him.  Of course, when a boy goes home from school full of the
praises of his teacher, his parents are pleased too, and think well of
the school, and tell their friends what a nice place it is for boys, and
so on.  It is a good advertisement, in fact.  Besides, with Mrs Trimble
so lazy, and Jonah himself so unattractive, it would involve a great
deal of trouble all round if Jeffreys deserted it.  They knew by
experience that young fellows of good education did not as a rule jump
at the situation of second usher in Galloway House.  And they knew,
also, something of the horrors of a prolonged vacancy in their staff.

Jonah was rather relieved when Jeffreys, immediately after school, shut
himself up in his own room, and remained there studying for the rest of
the evening.  The proceeding favoured a little idea of his own, which
was to revisit the spot where he had tied his bootlace the evening
before, and see if an examination of that fatal spot would throw any
fresh light on his investigation.  Accordingly after tea he sallied
forth with a trowel in his coat pocket.  It was rather a dismal
expedition, for it rained, and there was a cool breeze.  The lane was
muddy even in the roadway, and on the banks it was a quagmire.  Still
Jonah was too full of his mystery seriously to mind the weather.

He trudged up and down the lane, sharply scrutinising the hedge for his
bootlace.  For a long time his perseverance was unrewarded.  At length,
however, his eye detected the welcome flutter of a bright tag among the
leaves, and he recognised the scene of last night's damp sojourn.

He clambered up onto the bank, regardless of his garments, and commenced
an anxious scrutiny.  The bank itself showed no signs of a "mystery."
Even the traces of Jeffreys' visit to it the night before were
obliterated by the soaking rain.  The field on the other side was
equally unsuggestive.  Jonah trampled around in circles on the young
corn, but never a pistol, or a rusty knife, or a bottle of poison, did
he discover.

Yet he had heard the villain say distinctly,--

"This was the very place!"

He scrambled back rather crestfallen on to the bank.  It was getting
dark, and the rain came down ceaselessly, yet so strong was his
certainty that here he should discover the evidence he was looking for,
that for another half-hour he plied his trowel diligently.  Sometimes
when it struck on a stone or the roots of a bramble, he trembled with
anticipation; and once, when, groping under a hedge, his hand suddenly
encountered a dead rat, his hair literally stood on end.

He began to get nervous and uncomfortable.  The night became suddenly
dark, and the wind whistled all sorts of weird tunes among the trees.
Jonah did not exactly believe in ghosts; still, if there were such
things, this was just the night and just the place for the ghost he was
looking for to take its walk abroad.  He did not like it, and began to
wish he was safe at home.  The bushes round him began to rustle noisily,
and a gate in the field swung to and fro with an almost human groan.  He
fancied he could descry wandering lights and white gleams in the
darkness, and the vague consciousness of something coming nearer and
nearer.

At last, with a great effort, he roused himself from his moist seat, and
leaped down from the bank into the lane.

The instant his feet touched the road he was conscious of a low growl,
and next moment found himself pinned, with his back to the bank, by a
furious dog.

His yell of terror had mingled with the wind for a couple of minutes
before he became aware of the red glow of a cigar in front of him, and
behind that the dim countenance of the man whose talk with Jeffreys he
had overheard the previous evening.

"Oh, Mr Julius!" he howled; "help me.  Call him off; I shall be torn to
pieces."

"And pray how come you to know the name of my dog?" said Mr Halgrove;
"eh, my little highwayman?"

"Please, sir, I'm not a highwayman.  I was only looking for something on
the bank.  Oh, Mr Julius!"

"My dog is not used to be called Mr," replied Mr Halgrove.

"Oh, I--I thought that was your name," whimpered Jonah, not daring to
stir an inch for fear of incurring the resentment of the dog.

"And pray how came you to think my name was Julius?" said Mr Halgrove,
becoming interested.

"Oh! please sir, wasn't it you that was talking to Jeffreys last night
in the minster yard?"

It was too dark for Jonah to see Mr Halgrove's eyebrows go up at this
unexpected question.

"Julius, come in, sir.  So you know the gentleman I was speaking to
yesterday," said he, coolly.  "What did you say his name was?"

"Jeffreys, sir.  He's an--"

Jonah pulled up.  This man, whatever his name was, was Jeffreys'
accomplice.  Jonah felt he must not commit himself.

"I beg your pardon," said Mr Halgrove, noticing the abrupt pause.

"I am saying--it's--it's rather a wet night, sir," said Jonah, making a
move to walk on.

Mr Halgrove snapped his fingers to Julius, and next instant the
wretched Jonah was pinned again to the bank.

"What did you say he was?" asked Mr Halgrove, lighting a fusee.

"Oh, please, sir, please call him off.  My assistant, sir."

"Oh! your assistant--in what?  Highway robbery?"

"No, sir.  In teaching a school.  Please, sir, call him off."  Mr
Halgrove paid no heed to the entreaty, but proceeded to extract numerous
particulars as to his ward's conduct and mode of life at Galloway House.

"So he's taken to minding little boys, has he? and you are his employer?
You are aware that you have a treasure of course?"

Even Trimble was not so dense as to miss the sneer with which the
inquiry was made.  It emboldened him considerably.

"I dislike him; so does ma.  We consider him a dangerous character."

Mr Halgrove laughed.

"What makes you think that?"

"There's a--oh, sir, please call off the dog--mystery about him.
He's--"

"Is that the reason you spied on him yesterday?"

"No, sir--that is--" for at that moment Julius growled--"yes, sir.  I
thought if there was anything wrong it was my duty to the school to know
it, sir."

"Exemplary pedagogue!  And now you know it?  Eh?"

"Well, sir, I have my suspicions."

"No!  And what might your suspicions be?"

"Oh, sir," replied the wretched Jonah, feeling like a blue-bottle on a
pin, "I believe he's a murderer in hiding.  I really do."

"Clever little ferret!  You've found that out, have you?"

"I feel no doubt about it," said Jonah, plucking up a little confidence.

"Don't feel any.  When and where did the interesting event take place?"

"Oh, you could tell me that better than I can tell you," stammered
Trimble.

"Indeed!" said Mr Halgrove, his eyebrows going up ominously in the
dark.

"Of course I shouldn't--that is--I should never dream of getting _you_
into trouble, sir."

Mr Halgrove took his cigar out of his mouth and stared at the speaker.

"I'd wait till you were safe away in America, sir; and even then I
wouldn't let your name be known, you know, as an accomplice."

Mr Halgrove put his cigar back into his mouth, and changed his cane
from his left hand to his right.

"Fetch him here, Julius," said he, stepping back into the middle of the
road.

It was in vain the wretched Jonah howled and called for mercy.

"So you won't let my name be known as an accomplice!  How very kind!"

And he gave practical proof of his gratitude by caning Jonah till both
were tired.

"Now good-night," said Mr Halgrove when he had done, "and thank you for
a pleasant evening.  I dare say Mr Jeffreys will make up for any little
deficiencies on my part if you ask him.  Ask him, with my compliments,
to show you the little game he played with one of his old school-
fellows.  Good-night, Mr Trimble.  Wish him good-night, Julius."

Julius once more pinned his affrighted victim to the bank, and then
following at his master's heels, left the bruised and bewildered Jonah
to limp home as best he could.

The day he had had yesterday had been nothing in comparison with to-day!
In the school, meanwhile, there was jubilation and thanksgiving over
the fact that Jonah had a bad headache.  Jeffreys, with the first and
second classes merged for the occasion into one, amazed Mrs Trimble by
the order and industry which he commanded.

"The young man's worth his money," said the good lady, with a sigh of
relief, for she had counted on losing her nap for that day at least, and
was grateful beyond measure to find her fears disappointed.

As for the first class, they got completely spoiled by their day's
change of teacher, and vowed they would all become dunces in order to be
put back in the second class.

"I say, Jeff," said Teddy confidentially, as the school was being
dismissed, "_is_ there any chance of his dying?  It's been so ripping
to-day without him."

"Hold your tongue, sir," said Jeffreys, in a tone which astonished his
bloodthirsty young confidant; "you're old enough to know better than
talk like that."

Teddy looked very miserable at this rebuke.

"Don't be in a wax with me, Jeff," he said appealingly.  "Whatever would
I do if you got to hate me?"

Jeffreys was not proof against this, and walked home with his two young
friends, beguiling the way with cheery talk, which effectually dispelled
the cloud which his passing anger had roused.

On his way back he felt impelled to climb for a moment on the bank at
his favourite spot.  It amazed him to see the ground all torn up, and to
find a trowel lying half bedded in the turf at the top.  Still more did
it surprise and perplex him to find a penknife, which he recognised at
once as belonging to Trimble, and which he distinctly recollected having
seen in that hero's hand during school the afternoon of the preceding
day.  What did it all mean?



CHAPTER NINE.

A THUNDERSTORM.

It did not add to Jonah's happiness to see the looks of evident disgust
with which the first class greeted his reappearance in the schoolroom.
Their pleasant experience yesterday had demoralised them, and they
settled down listlessly at Jonah's bidding like voyagers who, after a
day in still waters, put out once more to the rough sea.  Teddy
especially felt the hardships of the mighty deep.  Jonah's eye
transfixed him all day.  If he spoke, if he fidgeted, if he looked
about, the hand of the tyrant swooped down upon him.

He spent the greater part of the day standing on the form.  The contents
of his pockets (including some priceless marbles) were impounded; he had
two columns of dates to commit to memory before he could go home; and,
hardest of all, because of a little blot, he was reduced to the
ineffable humiliation of writing all his exercises on a slate!

It took all the big heart of the little fellow to bear up against this
mountain of calamity, and had it not been for an occasional glimpse of
Jeffreys' face, turned sympathetically in his direction, his courage
might have failed him.

School closed, and still his dates were unlearnt.  His legs ached with
standing hour after hour on the narrow form, and his head, lifted three
feet higher than usual into the heated atmosphere of the room, swam
ominously.

Freddy, after waiting about dismally for half an hour, had gone home
alone.  The voices of boys remaining to play or talk in the yard outside
had one after another ceased.  Jeffreys had long since taken himself and
his books elsewhere, and only Jonah was left to keep watch over his
prisoner.

The boy made a tremendous effort to master the dates, but they went
through him like water through a sieve.  He could not even keep his eyes
on the book, and when he turned them towards the master's desk, Jonah
seemed to be half hidden in mist.  He edged cautiously to the end of the
form nearest the wall, where at least he might get a little support.  It
was a perilous voyage, for he was two feet away, and scarcely dare move
at a greater rate than an inch a minute.  He got there at last, nearly
done up, and with a sigh of relief leaned his head against the cold
plaster.

"Rosher, stand at the other end of the form immediately, and learn
twenty more dates for being idle."

Alas poor Teddy!  He had held out long, and braved much.  But his heart
quailed now.  He seemed glued to the wall, and the form all of a sudden
seemed to contract into a tight-rope over a chasm.

"I'm so tired, sir, I--"

"Silence, sir! and do what you're told," thundered Jonah.

Teddy staggered forward half a step, but shrank back before he had
finished it to the friendly wall.

Trimble rose from his seat.

"Do you hear me?" he shouted furiously.  "Stand where I tell you."

"Please, sir, I can't.  I--"

Here Trimble advanced towards him, and Teddy, fairly unnerved and almost
fainting, slipped down from the bench and burst into tears.

"That's it, is it?" said Jonah; "we'll see whether you can or--"

At that instant the door opened, and Jeffreys entered the room.

It did not require the boy's sobbing appeal, "Oh, Jeff, Jeff!" to enable
him to take in the situation at a glance.  Nor did it need a second
glance at the face of the intruder to induce Jonah to turn pale.

Jeffreys advanced without a word to the form, brushing Jonah out of his
way with a swing that sent him staggering six paces down the floor, and
putting his arm round Teddy, led him without a word from the room.

"Come along, little chap," said he, when they got outside; "come home."

The sound of his voice revived Teddy like a cordial.

"Do you hate me for blubbering?" he asked anxiously; "wasn't it like a
baby?"

"How long had you been up there?" asked Jeffreys.

"It was half-past one when he stood me up.  I had only just been looking
round to see where Freddy was; and oh, Jeff, I've got to write on a
slate just because of a little blot.  What's the time now?"

"Half-past five," said Jeffreys, putting on his hat, and swinging
Teddy's satchel over his own arm.

"Are you coming with me Jeff?" asked the boy eagerly.

"Of course you couldn't get home alone."

Great was the content of the little fellow as he left Galloway House
with his hand on the strong arm of his tutor.  Greater still were his
surprise and content when, as soon as the streets were past, Jeffreys
took him up on his back and carried him the rest of the way to Ash
Cottage.

"Thanks, awfully, old Jeff," said the boy, as they parted at the gate of
the cottage.  "What makes you so kind to Freddy and me?"

"I'm not good at riddles, Teddy.  Good-night," and he went.

Jonah, as he was not surprised to find, was expecting him, in a state of
high ferment.  Jeffreys would fain have avoided an interview.  For he
was constantly discovering that he was still far from sure of himself.
That afternoon his passion had been within an ace of mastering him; and
at any time he dreaded something might happen which would undo all the
penance of those last six months.  He therefore resolved wisely in the
present instance to avoid altercation as far as possible.

"Well, sir, and what have you got to say for yourself?  Where have you
been?" demanded Jonah, in tones of lofty bitterness.

"I have just taken Rosher home.  After standing four hours on the form
he wasn't fit to walk himself."

"Oh!" snorted Jonah, nearly bursting with indignation; "and pray how--"

"Excuse me, Trimble.  If you and Mrs Trimble wish me to leave, I'll do
so.  If not, don't talk to me.  I don't want it."

Poor Jonah nearly had a fit.  He, head man of Galloway House, knowing
what he did, to be spoken to like this by a stuck-up--murderer!

He had prepared a scene, and had counted on coming to an understanding
then and there.  And lo and behold! before he had well opened his mouth,
he had been ordered to shut it by the very being whom he had at his
mercy.  It passed Jonah's comprehension.

Jeffreys waited a minute to give him a chance of accepting his former
alternative.  Then, concluding he had decided on the latter, he betook
himself to his own room and remained there.

Jonah, as soon as he could recover himself sufficiently to think at all,
made up his mind that, come what would, he had had enough of this sort
of life.  With which conviction he crushed his hat on his head, and
sallied forth into the open air.

His feet almost instinctively turned in the direction of Ash Lane; but
on this occasion they went past the fatal bank and brought their owner
to a halt at the door of Ash Cottage.

"Is Mr Rosher at home?" inquired he of the servant.

Mr Rosher was at home--a jovial, well-to-do farmer, with a hearty
Yorkshire voice and a good-humoured grin on his broad face.

"Well, lad, what is't?" he asked, as Trimble, hat in hand, was shown
into the little parlour.  "Man, it's the little school-maister."

"Yes, Mr Rosher," said Trimble; "I should like five minutes' talk with
you if you can spare the time."

"Blaze away, lad.  A've nothin' else to do."

"I'm rather anxious about your two dear little boys," began Trimble.

"Thee needn't be that; they're tight lads, and learn quite fast enough."

"It's not that, Mr Rosher, though I hope they do justice to the pains
we take with them."

"They nearly killed their mother t'other day on the tricycle," said Mr
Rosher, laughing like a young bull.  "Was't thee or t'other young chap
came to mend t'auld bone-shaker?  Twas a kindly turn to the little
fellows, and I'm sorry thee didn't stay to tea, lad."

"We always like to try to make them happy," said Jonah.  "Indeed, that
is what I came to see you about.  I'm sorry to say--"

"Thee's come to tell me why Teddy was blubbering when he got home.
Thee'd better tell that to his mother," said the father.

"I'm so sorry to say," pursued Jonah, beginning to wish he was over his
task, "my assistant-master is disappointing me.  I took him on half in
charity six months ago, but lately he has been having a bad influence in
the school, and I thought it, my duty--"

"Tut, tut!  The lads have been cheerier this last six months than ever
before--"

"Of course we try all we can to make them happy, and shield them from
harm," pursued Trimble, "and I am glad you think we have made school
happy for them--"

"And is that all thee's come to say?" said the bewildered parent.

"No, sir.  Of course in school I can look after the boys and see they
come to no harm; but after school hours of course they are out of my
control, and then it is I'm afraid of their coming to mischief.  My
assistant, I hear, has been in the habit of walking home with them, and
from what I know of him he is not a desirable companion for them, and I
think it is my duty to put you on your guard, Mr Rosher.  They should
not be encouraged to see too much of him out of doors or bring him to
the house."

"It bothers me why you keep the man if he's that sort!" said Mr Rosher.
"What's wrong with him?"

"I'm afraid he's a bad character.  I have only discovered it lately, and
intend to dismiss him as soon as I get a new assistant."

"What dost mean by a bad character?  Is he a thief?"

Trimble looked very grave.

"I wish it was no worse than that."

The farmer's jaw dropped.

"What?" said he.  "Dost mean to tell me the man's a murderer?"

Jonah looked terribly shocked.

"It's a dreadful thing to suspect any one," said he, "but it would not
be right of me to let things go on without warning you.  I shall keep
your boys under my own eyes all school-time; and I advise you--"

"I don't want thy advice.  Take thyself off!"

Jonah saw that to prolong the interview would only make matters worse.
The good father was evidently roused; but whether against him, Jonah, or
against Jeffreys, he could scarcely tell.  He departed decidedly
crestfallen, and more than half repenting of his amiable expedition.

His misgivings were somewhat relieved next morning when Freddy and Teddy
put in an appearance punctually at school-time.  Jonah considered it
expedient under the circumstances not to refer to Teddy's mutinous
conduct on the preceding day--a determination which afforded great
comfort to that young gentleman and which he put down by a mysterious
process of reasoning to Jeffreys' good offices on his behalf.

Jonah, however, on this particular morning felt far from comfortable.
It may have been the hot sultry day, or it may have been the general
oppression of his own feelings, which gave him a sense of something--
probably a thunderstorm impending.  His class remarked that he was less
exacting than usual, and even Jeffreys became aware that his colleague
for once in a way was not himself.

The clock had just struck twelve, and the boys were beginning to look
forward to their usual break in half an hour's time, when the schoolroom
door suddenly opened, and disclosed the broad figure of Mr Rosher,
followed at a timid distance by Mrs Trimble.

Jonah's face turned pale; Freddy and Teddy opened their eyes to their
widest.  Jeffreys, on hearing Freddy mutter "Father," looked round
curiously, to get a view of the father of his little friends.

Mr Rosher recognised Trimble with a nod.

"I've coom, you see, lad.  I want to have a look at this murderer fellow
thee was talking about.  Where is he?"

It was a thunderclap with a vengeance!  Only two persons in the room
guessed all it meant.

"Coom, trot him out, man," repeated the farmer, noticing the hesitation
in Jonah's scared face.  "Is that the chap yonder thee was telling me
of?" added he, pointing to Jeffreys.

It was all up with Galloway House, and Jonah knew it.

"Yes," said he.

Jeffrey's face became livid as he sprang to his feet.

"Stay where thou art," said the brawny farmer, motioning him back.
"Let's have a look at thee.  So thee's a manslayer?  Thou looks it."

A terrible pause followed--the pause of a man who struggles for words
that will not come.

He looked terrible indeed; with heaving chest and bloodless lips, and
eyes like the eyes of a hunted wolf.  At length he gasped--

"Liar!" and advanced towards the affrighted Jonah.

But the sturdy Yorkshire-man stepped between.

"Nay, nay," said he, "one's enough.  Stay where thou art, and let him
give chapter and verse--chapter and verse.  He came to me last night,
and said thou wast a murderer, and I've coom to see if thou art.  Thou
looks one, but maybe thou'rt right to call him a liar."

"Ask him," gasped Jonah, "what he did to his old schoolfellow, young
Forrester, and then lot him call me a liar if he likes."

"Dost hear, lad?  What was it thee did to thy old schoolfellow young
Forrester?  That's a fair question.  Out with it."

If Jeffreys had looked terrible a moment ago, he looked still more
terrible now, as he sank with a groan onto the bench, and turned a
sickened look on his accuser.

The dead silence of the room almost stunned him.  He seemed to feel
every eye that turned to him like a dagger in his heart, and there rose
up in his mind a vision of that football field far away, and the
senseless figure of the boy who lay there.  Everything came back.  The
howl of execration, the frightened faces, the cap lying where the boy
had flung it, even the chill autumn breeze in his face.

He knew not how long he sat there stupefied.  The voice of Mr Rosher
roused him.

"Coom, now, dost thou say liar still?"

Jeffreys struggled to his feet, no longer furious, but still more
terrible in his dejection.

"Yes," snapped Jonah, astonished at the effect of his accusation, and
just wise enough to see that to add to or take away from the story would
be to spoil it.  "What did you do to your poor schoolfellow, young
Forrester?  Do you suppose we don't see through you?"

"Hold thy tongue, little donkey!" said the farmer; "let's hear what he
has to say."

For a moment it seemed as if Jeffreys was about to take him at his word,
and say something.  But his tongue failed him at the critical moment,
and he gave it up.  He had caught sight of Teddy's eyes fixed on his in
mingled misery and terror, and the sight unmanned him.

He moved slowly to the door.

They watched him, spellbound, and in a moment he would have gone, had
not Teddy with a big sob made a spring forward and seized him by the
arm.

"Oh, Jeff it's a wicked he; we don't believe it.  Freddy, we don't
believe it, do we?  Father, he's been good to us; he never did anything
unkind.  Don't have him sent away!"

This appeal fairly broke the spell.  Freddy was at his brother's side in
an instant, and the rest of the school, had not Mr Rosher motioned them
back, would have followed him.

"Teddy and Freddy, my lads," said the farmer, "go to thy seats like good
lads.  Let him say yea or nay to what this--little--peacher says."

"Say you didn't, Jeff," implored the boys.

Jeffreys shook his head sadly.

"I can't," he said.  "If he's dead--"

"Oh, he's dead," put in Jonah; "I can tell you that."

Jeffreys gave one scared look at the speaker, and then hurried from the
room.

Mrs Trimble followed him up to his room.

"I don't believe it all," said she; "you never did it on purpose, you're
not so bad as that.  I won't believe it even if you tell me," said the
good lady, bursting into tears.

Jeffreys put together his few books and garments.

"You're going," said she, "of course.  It's no use hoping you won't.
Here's two pounds you're owed--and--"

Jeffreys took the money, and kept her hand for a moment in his.

"You are kind," said he hoarsely.  "Good-bye, Mrs Trimble."

He kissed her hand and took up his bundle.

At the foot of the stairs a boy's hand was laid on his arm.

"Oh, Jeff," whispered Teddy--he had stolen out of the schoolroom.  "Poor
Jeff!  I know you aren't wicked.  Say good-bye, Jeff.  What shall we do?
What shall we do?"

"Good-bye, little chap," said Jeffreys, stooping down and kissing the
boy's wet cheek.

"But, Jeff, where are you going?  When will you--?"

Jeffreys was gone.

In the schoolroom meanwhile the inevitable reaction had taken place.

As the door closed behind Jeffreys, Jonah, hardly knowing what he did,
gave vent to a hysterical laugh.

It was the signal for an explosion such as he had little counted on.

"Thou little dirty toad!" said the farmer, rounding on him wrathfully;
"what dost mean by that?  Hey?  For shame!"

"Beast!" shouted Freddy, choking with anger and misery.

"Beast!" echoed the school.

Some one threw a wet sponge across the room, but Mr Rosher intercepted
it.

"Nay, nay, lads; don't waste your clean things on him.  Freddy and
Teddy, my lads--where's Teddy?--come along home.  You've done with
Galloway House."

"Why, sir--" expostulated the wretched Jonah.

"Hold thy tongue again," roared the farmer.  "Coom away, lads.  Thee can
take a half-holiday to-day, all of you, and if thy parents ask why, say
Farmer Rosher will tell them."

"I'll have you prosecuted," growled Trimble, "for interfering with my--"

"Dost want to be shut up in yon cupboard?" roared the hot-headed farmer.
And the hint was quite enough.

Galloway House on that day turned a corner.  Farmer Rosher, who had sore
doubts in his own mind whether he had done good or harm by his
interference, spoke his mind freely to his neighbours on the subject of
Jonah Trimble, a proceeding in which his two sons heartily backed him
up.  The consequence was that that worthy young pedagogue found his
scholastic labours materially lightened--for a dozen boys are easier to
teach than fifty--and had time to wonder whether after all he would not
have served his day and generation quite as well by looking after his
own affairs, as after the most unprofitable affairs of somebody else.



CHAPTER TEN.

TOSSED ABOUT.

Jeffreys, as the reader will have discovered, did not possess the art of
doing himself common justice.  He had brooded so long and so bitterly
over his fatal act of violence at Bolsover, that he had come almost to
forget that accident had had anything to do with poor Forrester's
injuries.  And now, when confronted with his crime, even by a despicable
wretch like Trimble, he had not the spirit to hold up his head and make
some effort at any rate to clear himself of all that was charged against
him.

Jeffreys was still a blunderer, or else his conscience was unusually
sensitive.  You and I, reader, no doubt, would have put a bold face on
the matter, and insisted the whole affair was entirely an accident, and
that we were to be pitied rather than blamed for what had happened.  And
a great many people would have pitied us accordingly.  But Jeffreys
claimed no pity.  He saw nothing but his own ruthless fault; and he
chose to take the whole burden of it, and the burden of the accident
besides, on his own shoulders.

And so it was he left Galloway House without a word, and cast himself
and his bad name once more adrift on a pitiless world.

But as he walked on he was not thinking of Galloway House, or Farmer
Rosher, or Freddy or Teddy.  The last words of Trimble rang in his ears,
and deafened him to all beside.

"He's dead--_I_ can tell you that!"

It never occurred to him to wonder whence Jonah had derived his
information, or whether it was true or false.

Mr Brampton's letter five months ago had left little hope of the boy's
recovery, but not till now had Jeffreys heard any one say, in so many
words "He is dead."  Jonah apparently knew the whole story.  How he had
discovered it, it was useless to guess.  And yet for a moment Jeffreys
was tempted to return and seize his accuser by the throat and demand the
truth of him.  But he dismissed the notion with a shudder.

His steps turned, half mechanically, half by chance, towards his
guardian's house.  He had never been in that quarter of York since the
night of his expulsion, and he did not know why of all places he should
just now turn thither.  His guardian, as he well knew, was even more
pitiless and cynical than ever, and any hope of finding shelter or rest
under his roof he knew to be absurd.  He might, however, be out; indeed,
he had spoken of going to America, in which case Mrs Jessop might be
there alone.

One clings to the idea of a home; and this place, such as it was, was
the only place which for Jeffreys had ever had any pretensions to the
blessed name.  His expectations--if he had any--vanished as he abruptly
turned the corner of the street and stood in front of the house.  The
shutters on the lower floor were closed, and the windows above were
curtainless and begrimed with dust.  A notice "To let," stared out from
a board beside the front door, and the once cosy little front garden was
weed-grown and run to seed.

Jeffreys felt a stronger man as he walked out of York in the deepening
twilight.  He was in the way of old associations just now, for almost
without knowing it he found himself quitting York by way of Ash Lane,
every step of which by this time was familiar--painfully familiar
ground.  The bank on which he had last found Jonah's knife had now new
attractions for him.  Not so a garden shed, by the back of which he
passed, and whence proceeded the glimmer of a light, and the sound of
boys' voices.

He could not help standing a moment, and motioning Julius close to his
heels, listening.

"It's broken worse than ever now," said Freddy.  "It's no use trying to
mend it."

"Jeff could have done it.  I say, Freddy, whatever did father mean?"

"I don't know.  All I know is I'll never forget dear old Jeff; shall
you?"

"Rather not.  I'm going to pray for him once a day, Freddy."

"All serene--so shall I."

Jeffreys stole one hurried glance through the cracked timbers, and then
walked away quickly and with a heart brim full.

Whenever in after days his soul needed music, he had only to call up the
voices of those two little fellows in the shed as he last heard them.
Little heeded they what came of their childish words.  Little heeded
they that they were helping to make a true man of the Jeff they loved,
and that whatever true strength he came to possess for fighting life's
battles and bearing life's burdens, he owed it beyond any one to them!

He walked on rapidly and steadily for two hours, until the last
lingering glow of the summer light had faded from the sky, and the
lights of York behind him were lost in the night.  A field of new-mown
hay provided him with the most luxurious bedroom man could desire.

The thought uppermost in his mind when he awoke next morning was young
Forrester.  He felt that it would be useless for him to attempt anything
or hope for anything till he had ascertained whatever was to be known
respecting the boy's fate.  Trimble's words, which rang in his ears, had
a less positive sound about them.  At least he would find out for
himself whether they were true or false.

Grangerham, the small country town in which he had ascertained Forrester
lived, and to which he had been removed from Bolsover, was far enough
away from York.  Jeffreys had many a time sought it out on the map, and
speculated on how it was to be reached, should a summons arrive to call
him thither.  It was seventy miles away as the crow flies.  Jeffreys had
the way there by heart.  He knew what time the trains left York, what
were the junctions along the line, and how far the nearest railway
station would take him to his journey's end.

Now, however, it was a question of walking, not riding.  The two pounds
in his pocket, all he possessed, scarcely seemed his at all as long as
Mr Frampton's school bill was unsettled.  At any rate, it was too
precious to squander in railway fares for a man who could walk for
nothing.

It was a long, harassing journey, over moors and along stony roads.  It
was not till the evening of the second day that the footsore traveller
read on a sign-post the welcome words, "Four miles to Grangerham."  He
had eaten little and rested little on the way, and during the last
twelve hours a broiling sun had beaten down pitilessly upon him.

If the journey of the two last days had been exhausting, the fruitless
search of the day that followed was fully as wearisome.  Grangerham was
a pretty big manufacturing town, and Jeffreys' heart sank within him as
soon as he entered it.  For who among these busy crowds would be likely
to know anything of an invalid old lady and her cripple grandson?

In vain he enquired in street after street for Mrs Forrester's address.
Some had not heard the name.  Some knew a public-house kept by one Tony
Forrester.  Some recollected an old lady who used to keep a
costermonger's stall and had a baby with fits.  Others, still more
tantalising, began by knowing all about it, and ended by showing that
they knew nothing.  At the police-office they looked at him hard, and
demanded what he wanted with anybody of the name of Forrester.  At the
post-office they told him curtly they could not tell him anything unless
he could give the old lady's address.

At length, late in the day, he ventured to knock at the door of the
clergyman of that part of the town in which the only few residents'
houses seemed to be, and to repeat his question there.

The clergyman, a hard-working man who visited a hundred families in a
week, at first returned the same answer as everybody else.  No, he did
not know any one of that name.

"Stay," he said; "perhaps you mean old Mrs Wilcox."

Jeffreys groaned.  Everybody had been suggesting the name of some old
lady to him different from the one he wanted.

"She had a nephew, I think, who was a cripple.  The poor fellow had had
an accident at school, so I heard.  I almost think he died.  I never saw
him myself, but if you come with me, I'll take you to the Wesleyan
minister.  I think he knows Mrs Wilcox."

Thankful for any clue, however slight, Jeffreys accompanied the good man
to the Wesleyan minister.

"Mrs Wilcox--ah, yes," said the latter, when his brother pastor had
explained their errand.  "She died in Torquay five months ago.  She was
a great sufferer."

"And her nephew?" inquired the clergyman.

"Her grandson, you mean."

Jeffreys' heart leapt.  "What was his name?" he asked, excitedly.

"Forrester; a dear young fellow he was.  His mother, who died out in
India, was Mrs Wilcox's only daughter.  Yes, poor Gerard Forrester was
brought home from school about six months ago terribly crippled by an
accident.  It was said one of his school-fellows had--"

"But where is he now? tell me, for mercy's sake!" exclaimed Jeffreys.

"I cannot tell you that," replied the minister.  "His grandmother was
ordered to Torquay almost as soon as he arrived home.  He remained here
about a month in charge of his old nurse; and then--"

"He's not dead!" almost shouted Jeffreys.

"Then," continued the minister, "when the news came of his grandmother's
death, they left Grangerham.  From all I can hear, Mrs Wilcox died very
poor.  I believe the nurse intended to try to get him taken into a
hospital somewhere; but where or how I never knew.  I was away in London
when they disappeared, and have never heard of them since."

"Isn't his father alive?"

"Yes.  I wrote to him by Mrs Wilcox's request.  He is an officer in
India in the Hussars.  I have had no reply, and cannot be sure that the
letter has reached him, as I see that his regiment has been dispatched
to Afghanistan."

"Did you never hear from the nurse?" asked Jeffreys.

"Never."

"And was it thought Forrester would recover?"

"I believe it was thought that if he got special treatment in a hospital
his life might be spared."

This then was all Jeffreys could hear.  Jonah Trimble might be right
after all.  How he abused himself for flying from York as he had done
without extracting the truth first!  It was too late now.  He begged to
be taken to see the house where Forrester lived.  It was occupied by a
new tenant, and all he could do was to pace up and down in front of it,
in a lonely vigil, and try to imagine the pale face which only a few
months back had gazed wearily from those windows on the active life
without, in which he was never more to take a share.

He had not the courage to wait that night in Grangerham, although the
minister urged him and Julius, tramps as they were, to do so.  He felt
stifled in these narrow streets, and longed for the fresh heath, where
at least he could be alone.

He accepted, however, the hospitality of his guide for half an hour in
order to write a short note to Mr Frampton.  He said:--

"I have come here hoping to hear something of Forrester.  But I can hear
nothing more than what you told me four months ago.  He has left here in
charge of his old nurse, and has not been heard of since.  You will
wonder why I have left York.  The story of what happened at Bolsover
reached the ears of my employer's son.  He accused me of it before all
the school, and added that he knew Forrester was dead.  I could not
stand it, and came away--though I feel now I was foolish not to
ascertain first how he had learned what you and I have not yet been able
to hear.  It is too terrible to believe! and I cannot believe it till I
find out for myself.  Where I shall go next I do not know, and feel I do
not care.  My guardian has left York.  I saw him two days before I came
away, and he told me then he should refuse to pay my last half-term's
bill, which came to £7.  I enclose thirty shillings now--all I have; and
you may depend on my sending the rest as soon as I can earn it; for I
shall be miserable as long as I owe a farthing to Bolsover."

Having written this dismal letter, and having posted it with its
enclosure, he bade farewell to Grangerham, and wandered forth with the
sympathetic Julius out on to the quiet heath, and there lay down--not to
sleep, but to think.



CHAPTER ELEVEN.

WILDTREE TOWERS.

Jeffreys spoke truly when he wrote to Mr Frampton that he did not know
and did not care where he was going next.  When he awoke in his heathery
bed next morning, he lay indolently for a whole hour for no other reason
than because he did not know whether to walk north, south, east or west.
He lacked the festive imagination which helps many people under similar
circumstances.  It did not occur to him to toss up, nor was he aware of
the value of turning round three times with his eyes closed and then
marching straight before him.  Had he been an errant knight, of course
his horse would have settled the question; but as it was, he was not a
knight and had not a horse.  He had a dog, though.  He had found Julius
in possession of the caretaker at his guardian's house, and had begged
her to let him have him.

"Which way are we going, Julius?" inquired the dog's master, leaning
upon his elbow, and giving no sign which the dog could possibly construe
into a suggestion.

Julius was far too deep an animal not to see through an artless design
like this.  But for all that he undertook the task of choosing.  He rose
from his bed, shook himself, rubbed a few early flies off his face, and
then, taking up the bundle in his teeth, with a rather contemptuous
sniff, walked sedately off, in the direction of the North Pole.
Jeffreys dutifully followed; and thus it was that one of the most
momentous turns in his life was taken in the footsteps of a dog.

Let us leave him, reader, tramping aimlessly thus o'er moor and fell,
and hill and dale, leaving behind him the smoke of the cotton country
and the noisy shriek of the railway, and losing himself among the lonely
valleys and towering hills of Westmoreland--let us leave him, footsore,
hungry, and desponding, and refresh ourselves in some more cheery scene
and amidst livelier company.

Where shall we go? for we can go anywhere.  That's one of the few little
privileges of the storyteller.  Suppose, for instance, we take farewell
of humble life altogether for a while, and invite ourselves into some
grand mansion, where not by the remotest possibility could Jeffreys or
Jeffreys' affairs be of the very slightest interest.

What do you say to this tempting-looking mansion, marked in the map as
Wildtree Towers, standing in a park of I should not like to say how many
acres, on the lower slopes of one of the grandest mountains in the Lake
country?

On the beautiful summer afternoon on which we first see it, it certainly
looks one of the fairest spots in creation.  As we stand on the
doorstep, the valley opens out before us, stretching far to the south,
and revealing reaches of lake and river, broad waving meadows and
clustering villages, wild crags and pine-clad fells.

We, however, do not stand on the doorstep to admire the view, or even to
ask admission.  We have the storyteller's latchkey and invisible cap.
Let us enter.  As we stand in the great square hall, hung round in
baronial style with antlers, and furnished in all the luxury of modern
comfort, wondering through which of the dozen doors that open out of the
square it would be best worth our while to penetrate, a footman, bearing
a tray with afternoon tea, flits past us.  Let us follow him, for
afternoon tea means that living creatures are at hand.

We find ourselves in a snug little boudoir, furnished and decorated with
feminine skill and taste, and commanding through the open French windows
a gorgeous view down the valley.  Two ladies, one middle-aged, one
young, are sitting there as the footman enters.  The elder, evidently
the mistress of the mansion, is reading a newspaper; the younger is
dividing her time between needlework and looking rather discontentedly
out of the window.

It is quite evident the two are not mother and child.  There is not the
slightest trace of resemblance between the handsome aquiline face of the
elder, stylishly-dressed woman, and the rounder and more sensitive face
of her quietly-attired companion.  Nor is there much in common between
the frank eyes and mock-demure mouth of the girl, and the half-
imperious, half-worried look of her senior.

"Tell Mr Rimbolt, Walker," says the mistress, as she puts down her
paper, and moves her chair up to the tea-table, "and Master Percy."

A handsome gentleman, just turning grey, with an intellectual and good-
humoured face, strolls into the room in response to Walker's summons.

"I was positively nearly asleep," he says; "the library gets more than
its share of the afternoon sun."

"It would be better for you, dear, if you took a drive or a walk,
instead of shutting yourself up with your old books."

The gentleman laughs pleasantly, and puts some sugar in his tea.

"You are not very respectful to my old friends," said he.  "You forget
how long we've been parted.  Where's Percy?"

"Walker has gone to tell him."

"I think he is out," said the young lady; "he told me he was going down
to the river."

"I consider," said Mrs Rimbolt rather severely, "he should tell _me_
what he is going to do, not you."

"But, aunt, I didn't ask him.  He volunteered it."

"Fetch your uncle's cup, Raby."

Raby's mouth puckers up into a queer little smile as she obeys.

Walker appears in a minute to confirm the report of Master Percy's
absence.  "He's been gone this three hours, mem."

"Let some one go for him at once, Walker."

"I get so terrified when he goes off like this," says the mother;
"there's no knowing what may happen, and he is so careless."

"He has a safe neck," replies the father; "he always does turn up.  But
if you are so fidgety, why don't you send Raby to look after him?"

"If any one went with him, it would need to be some one who, instead of
encouraging him in his odd ways, would keep him in hand, and see he did
not come to any harm."

"Oh," says Raby, laughing, "he wouldn't take me with him if I paid him a
hundred pounds.  He says girls don't know anything about science and
inventions."

"He is probably right," observes Mrs Rimbolt severely.

"Certainly, as regards the science _he_ practises," says her husband.
"What was it he had in hand last week?  Some invention for making people
invisible by painting them with invisible paint?  Ha! ha!  He invited me
to let him try it on me."

"He _did_ try it on me," chimes in Raby.

"It is nothing to laugh about," says the mother; "it is much better for
him to be of an inquiring turn of mind than--idle," adds she, looking
significantly at her niece's empty hand.

"It strikes me it is we who are of an inquiring turn of mind just now,"
said the father.  "I fancy he'll turn up.  He generally does.
Meanwhile, I will go and finish my writing."  And he politely retires.

"Raby, my dear," says Mrs Rimbolt--Raby always knows what is coming
when a sentence begins thus--"Raby, my dear, it does not sound nice to
hear you making fun of your cousin.  Percy is very good to you--"

"Oh yes!" interrupts Raby, almost enthusiastically.

"Which makes it all the less nice on your part to make a laughing-stock
of him in the presence of his own father.  It may seem unlikely that
people should be rendered invisible--"

Mrs Rimbolt stops, conscious she is about to talk nonsense, and Raby
gallantly covers her retreat.

"I'm sure I wish I knew half what he does about all sorts of things."

"I wish so too," replies the aunt, severely and ungratefully.

Several hours pass, and still Master Percy does not put in an
appearance.  As Mrs Rimbolt's uneasiness increases, half a dozen
servants are sent out in various directions to seek the prodigal.  It is
an almost daily ceremony, and the huntsmen set about their task as a
matter of course.  No one can recollect an occasion on which Master
Percy has ever come home at the right time without being looked for.  If
the appointed hour is four, every one feels well treated if his honour
turns up at five.  Nor, with the exception of his mother, and now and
then Raby, does any one dream of becoming agitated for three or four
hours later.

When therefore, just as the family is sitting down to dinner at half-
past six, Walker enters radiant to announce that Master Percy has come
in, no one thinks any more about his prolonged absence, and one or two
of the servants outside say to one another that the young master must be
hungry to come home at this virtuous hour.

This surmise is probably correct, for Percy presents himself in a
decidedly dishevelled condition, his flannel costume being liberally
bespattered with mud, and his hair very much in need of a brush and
comb.

You cannot help liking the boy despite the odd, self-willed solemnity of
his face.  He is between fourteen and fifteen apparently, squarely
built, with his mother's aquiline features and his father's strong
forehead.  The year he has spent at Rugby has redeemed him from being a
lout, but it is uncertain whether it has done anything more.  The master
of his house has been heard to predict that the boy would either live to
be hanged or to become a great man.  Some of his less diplomatic school-
fellows had predicted both things, and when at the end of a year he
refused point blank to return to school, and solemnly assured his father
that if he was sent back he should run away on the earliest opportunity,
it was generally allowed that for a youth of his age he had some decided
ideas of his own.

The chief fault about him, say some, is that he has too many ideas of
his own, and tries to run them all together.  But we are digressing, and
keeping him from his dinner.

"My dear boy, where have you been?" says the mother; "we have been
looking for you everywhere."

"Oh, out!" replies Percy, hastily taking stock of the bill of fare.

"Well, run and dress yourself, or dinner will be cold."

"I'm too fagged," says Percy, coolly taking a seat.  "Some soup,
please."

"I can't have you sit down in that state, Percy," says Mr Rimbolt; "it
is not polite to your mother and Raby."

"If the poor boy is tired," says Mrs Rimbolt, "we must excuse him this
once."

So Mr Rimbolt, as has happened more than once before, gives in, and
Percy does as he pleases.

He does full justice to his dinner, and takes no part in the
conversation, which is chiefly carried on by Mr Rimbolt, sometimes with
his wife, sometimes with Raby.  At length, however, the first cravings
of appetite being subdued, he shows a readiness to put in his oar.

"How goes the invisible paint, Percy?" asks his father, with a twinkle
in his eye.

"Used up," replies the boy solemnly.  "I'm sure it would answer.  I
painted Hodge with it, and could scarcely see him at all from a
distance."

"I believe you paint yourself," says Raby, laughing, "and that's why the
men can't find you."

Percy is pleased at this, and takes it as a recognition of his genius.
He has great faith in his own discovery, and it is everything to him to
find some one else believing in it too.

"If you like to come to the river to-morrow, I'll show you something,"
says he condescendingly.  "It licks the paint into fits!"

"Raby will be busy in the village to-morrow," says her aunt.  "What is
it you are doing at the river?"

"Oh, ah!" solemnly responds the son, whose year at a public-school has
not taught him the art of speaking respectfully to his parents;
"wouldn't you like to know?"

"I wish you'd play somewhere else, dear.  It makes me so uneasy when you
are down by the river."

"Play!" says Percy rather scornfully; "I don't play there--I work!"

"I fear you are neglecting one sort of work for another, my boy," says
Mr Rimbolt; "we never got through Virgil yet, you know--at least, you
didn't.  I've been through three books since you deserted our readings."

"Oh, Virgil's jolly enough," replied the boy; "I'm going to finish it as
soon as my experiments are over."

"What experiments?"

"Oh, it's a dodge to--I'd show it you as soon as it's finished.  It's
nearly done now, and it will be a tremendous tip."

This is all that can be extracted from the youthful man of science--at
least, by the elders.  To Raby, when the family retires to the drawing-
room, the boy is more confidential, and she once more captivates him by
entering heart and soul into his project and entreating to be made a
party in the experiments.

"I'd see," says he; "but mind you don't go chattering!"

Mr Rimbolt gravitates as usual to his library, and here it is that half
an hour later his son presents himself, still in his working garb.

"Father," says the hopeful, "please can you give me some money?"

"Why, you have had ten shillings a week since you came home!"

"Aren't you a millionaire, father?"

"Some people say so."

"Doesn't that mean you've got a million pounds?"

"That's what `millionaire' means."

"Ten shillings a week is only twenty-six pounds a year."

"Quite right, and few boys get such good pocket-money."

"When I come into the property I shall allow my son more than that,"
says Percy gravely.

"Not if you love him as much as I love my son," says Mr Rimbolt, with a
pleasant smile.

"Good-night, father."

"Good-night!  Why, it's only half-past seven."

"I know.  I'm going to _get_ up early; I've got a lot of work to do.
Besides, I'm miserable."

"Why?"

"Because I can't get any money."

"Why not earn some?  I want some one to catalogue my books for me.  What
do you say to doing it?  I shall pay half a crown a shelf."

Percy hesitates a bit, and looks at the bookcases, and makes a mental
calculation.

"That will be about twelve pounds, won't it?  Have you got a book to
write the names on?"

"What!  Are you going to begin now?"

"Yes."

And Percy sits up till eleven o'clock, and succeeds in that time in
cataloguing after a fashion, and not badly for a first attempt, two of
the smallest shelves in the library, for which he receives then and
there five shillings, much to his own comfort and to his father's
amusement.

Mrs Rimbolt comes into the library just as the business is concluded.

"Why, Percy, not in bed--and so tired too!"

"Oh, I've been doing some work for father," says the boy, chinking the
two half-crowns in his pocket.

"But your father, I'm sure, would not wish you to injure your health."

"Certainly not.  Percy was hard up, and has just been earning five
shillings."

"What do you mean--earning five shillings?"

"Yes--father's been tipping me for cataloguing his books.  Jolly hard
work, but he pays on the nail, don't you, father?"

"My dear boy," said the mother, as she and her son walks across the
hall, "why did you not tell me you wanted money?  You know I do not
grudge it.  I don't like you to stay up so late to earn it, when you
ought to be resting."

"Well, I wouldn't mind another five shillings, mother."

The mother gives him a half-sovereign and kisses him.

Percy, as he walks up the stairs, ruminating on his good luck, feels
considerably more self-respect when he looks at the two half-crowns than
when looking at the half-sovereign.

At the top of the stairs he shouts down to Walker:--

"I say, wake me at six, will you? and leave my waterproof and top-boots
on the hall table; and, I say, tell Mason to cut me a dozen strong ash
sticks about a yard long; and, I say, leave a hammer and some tacks on
the hall table too; and tell Appleby to go by the early coach to
Overstone and get me a pound of cork, and some whalebone, and some tar.
Here's five shillings to pay for them.  Don't forget.  Tell him to leave
them at the lodge before twelve, and I'll fetch them.  Oh, and tell Raby
if she wants to see what I was telling her about, she had better hang
about the lodge till I come.  I'm sure to be there somewhere between
twelve and four."

With which the young lord of creation retires to his cubicle, leaving
Walker scratching his head, and regarding the five shillings in his hand
in anything but a joyful mood.

"He ought to be put on the treadmill a week or two; that's what would do
him good," observed the sage retainer to himself; "one thing at a time,
and plenty of it.  A dozen ash sticks before six o'clock in the morning!
What does he want with ash sticks?  Now his schoolmaster, if he'd got
one, would find them particular handy."

With which little joke Walker goes off to agitate Appleby and Mason with
the news of their early morning duties, and to put the servants' hall in
a flutter by announcing for the fiftieth time that summer that either he
or the young master would have to leave Wildtree Towers, because,
positively--well, they would understand--a man's respect for himself
demanded that he should draw the line somewhere, and that was just what
Master Percy would not allow him to do.

We have changed the scene once already in this chapter.  Just before we
finish let us change it once more, and leaving beautiful Wildtree and
its happy family, let us fly to a sorry, tumbledown, desolate shed five
miles away, on the hill-side.  It may have once belonged to a farm, or
served as a shelter for sheep on the mountain-slopes.  But it now
scarcely possesses a roof, and no sign of a habitation is anywhere
visible.

The night has come on rainy and dark, and a weary tramp with his dog has
been thankful to crawl into its poor shelter and rest his limbs.  The
wind has risen and howls dismally round the shed, breaking every now and
then through the loose planks, and stirring up the straw which carpets
the place.  But the traveller is too weary to heed it or the rain which
intrudes along with it, and crouching with his dog in the darkest
corner, curls himself up in true tramp fashion, and settles down to
sleep.

He has lain there two hours or more, and the mountain storm begins to
abate.  The dog has been uneasy for some time, and now in the midst of a
peal of thunder awakens his master with a gruff yap.  The sleeper sits
up in an instant.  It is not the thunder that has disturbed the dog, nor
is it thunder that the tramp now listens to close at hand.  It is the
sound of voices, either inside the shed or just outside it.

Not a strange thing, perhaps, in a storm like this, for two wayfarers
like himself to seek shelter--and yet the tramp seems startled by the
sound, and signals to the dog to lie down and hold his peace.

"Will it do?" says one voice; and the tramp perceives that the speakers
are standing outside the shed under the shelter of the projecting eaves.

"No.  No good.  Too well looked after, and the people about the wrong
sort."

"There's a pile of swag there--heaps."

"Know that.  Better wait till the family are away."

"There's a child, isn't there?"

"A boy--fourteen--only child."

"Might work it that way; eh?  Get a trifle for him eh?"

"A thousand, and no questions asked.  It's settled."

"It is!  Why didn't you say so?  How are you going to do it?"

"Never you mind.  Corporal and I have worked it out.  It will be done
to-night.  Moon's down at ten.  You be here at midnight, and have your
hay-cart handy.  Corporal and I will bring him here.  We know where to
find him in daylight, and can keep him quiet in the woods till dark."

"What then?  Who's to keep him?"

"Wait till you've got him."

"Are you sure they'll go a thousand for him?"

"Probably two.  Sheer off now, and don't forget, twelve o'clock."

The footsteps move away through the wet heather, and the tramp, waiting
motionless till the last sound has faded away, draws a long breath and
curls himself back into his roost.

But not to sleep--to meditate a campaign.

"Julius," says he to the dog, who appears to be fully alive to the
brewing storm, "you and I will have to stop this business.  There'll be
three to two, unless the boy fights too.  We must be here at eleven, and
tackle one of them before the other two come.  What do you say to that?"

Julius looks only sorry the business is not to begin at once.

Then the tramp and he go carefully into the plan of their little
campaign, and, as soon as day dawns, go out for a walk, Julius taking
care before quitting the shed to acquaint himself with the scent of the
two gentlemen who had lately sheltered outside it.

The tramp spends a quiet day on the mountain, reading Homer, and
admiring the view.  Towards nightfall he descends to Overstone and
spends a few of his remaining pence in a frugal meal.  Then, as the moon
dips behind the shoulder of Wild Pike, he betakes himself, with the
faithful Julius close at his heels, to the shed on the mountain-side.



CHAPTER TWELVE.

KIDNAPPING.

Percy Rimbolt, despite his unusual literary labours of the past evening,
rose promptly when Walker knocked at his door at six o'clock, and
arrayed himself once more in his flannels.

The storm of the night, which had disturbed Jeffreys and his dog five
miles away, had not spread as far as Wildtree, and the early summer sun
was already hot as he sallied forth with his waterproof over one arm,
and his dozen ash sticks under the other in the direction of the river.
Kennedy, at the lodge, was considerably astonished to be awakened by a
shower of gravel against his window, and to perceive, on looking out,
the young master in full fishing order standing below, "Kennedy,
Appleby's going to leave some things here for me about twelve o'clock.
Mind you're in, and wait till I come for them.  And if Raby comes, tell
her I'll be up about then; tell her not to go away."

"Do you want me down at the river, sir?" asked the old keeper.

"No, keep away; and don't let any one else come below Rodnet Bridge."
With which injunction the youthful man of science went on his way,
leaving Kennedy to shake his head and wonder what little game the young
master was up to now.

Percy plodded on a couple of miles down the stream, considerably beyond
the park boundaries, till he reached Rodnet Bridge, under which the
mountain torrent slipped in a swift, deep stream.  Just below the
bridge, among the trees which crowded down to the water's edge, was a
little hut, used by the Wildtree keepers for depositing their baskets
and nets, but now appropriated by the young heir of Wildtree for far
more important purposes.

It was here, in fact, that during the last two days he had conceived,
and begun to put into practice, the never-before-heard-of invention of a
machine for enabling a swimmer to swim up-stream at the rate of eight to
ten miles an hour!

Percy's recent career had been made up of a large number of magnificent
projects, admirable in every respect but one--they never quite came off.
Just as they neared perfection they "gave out," and something new took
their place.  It would be treason, however, to hint that the "anti-
current swimmer" was ever likely to give out.  There certainly seemed no
signs of it in the manner in which the inventor set about his task that
morning.  He had been provident enough to bring some sandwiches in his
pockets (provided at the last moment by the much-enduring Walker), and
on the strength of these he laboured half the morning.  It would puzzle
me to explain on what scientific principle the wonderful apparatus was
laid down, what mixture between the wing of a bird, the tail of a fish,
and the screw of a steamer it embodied.  I never was good at mechanics,
and certainly Percy Rimbolt's mechanics were such as it is given but to
few to follow.  Suffice it to say that by eleven o'clock the structure
had reached a critical stage, and stood still for want of the cork which
Appleby had been charged to procure.

The day was hot, and an hour at least must elapse before the messenger
could return from Overstone.  Percy, therefore, improved the shining
hour by a bathe in the clear stream, with whose depths he was evidently
familiar.  He made no attempt, pending the completion of the machine, to
oppose the swift current, but diving into it from the bridge, allowed
himself luxuriously to be carried down into the shallows a hundred yards
below, and without even the trouble of swimming.  This refreshing
performance ended, he returned to the hut and dressed.  He was in the
act of locking the door, preparatory to his journey up to Kennedy's
lodge, when a sack was suddenly thrown over his head from behind, and
next moment he found himself pinned to the ground in the clutches of two
men.  Before he was well aware of what had happened, his feet were tied
together, and his arms firmly lashed to his sides.  The sack was lifted
from his mouth, but not long enough to enable him to shout, for a gag
was roughly forced between his teeth; and then, while one of his captors
held his head, the other bandaged his eyes so completely that, had he
not known it, he could not have told whether it was mid-day or midnight.
Thus, in almost less time than it takes to narrate it, in broad
daylight, and on the borders of his own father's estate, the unfortunate
Percy was made captive, without so much as being able to give an alarm
or to see the faces of his assailants.

He was deposited comfortably on the floor of his own hut, by the side,
oh, cruel fate! of his own machine, and there left to work out any
number of problems which might occur to him during the next six hours;
while his custodians, having carefully padlocked the door, retired to a
respectful distance among the trees, where they could smoke their pipes
in peace, and at the same time keep an eye on the approaches to their
young ward's dungeon.

It did not take Percy many minutes to convince himself that any attempt
to struggle or extricate himself from his bonds would be labour thrown
away.  His captors were evidently well up to their business, and there
was no wriggling out of their neatly-tied bonds.  Nor did the onslaught
which the boy made with his teeth on the gag result in anything but
disaster.  It loosened at least two of his teeth, and gave him during
the remainder of the day considerable pain in some of the others.  As to
his eyes, he rubbed his forehead and the side of his head on the floor,
in the hopes of shifting the bandage, but all in vain.  He got it over
his ears as well as his eyes for his pains, and could scarcely hear a
sound.

As the afternoon went on, the sun slanted its rays cruelly through the
little skylight on to the spot where he lay, and the flies, attracted by
the rare chance, swarmed in under the door and through the cracks to
make merry wi

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