but the tables were to be turned in a startling and wholly unlooked-for manner. the boys had had their day of imposing on simple marmaduke; and now, in their turn, they were destined to suffer acutely from uneasiness and remorse for several hours.
such a sentence always finds a place in romances at certain conjunctures, and, if judiciously worded, reflects great credit on the romancer. but the reader cannot always perceive the beauty of such a sentence, and therefore it would be showing more respect for his feelings to follow our jim.
this hero had slipped away from his companions shortly before stephen at last appeared as priest. being only a figure-head on this occasion, his absence or presence did not concern them in the least, and he was suffered to slip out of the backdoor without comment.
he wished to make his way into the upper story without going up the stairs, as to do that it would be necessary to pass the hero and heroine. however, being well-acquainted with the building, and knowing how to climb, he easily made his way into the upper story from the rear. then he stole noiselessly across the gloomy chamber, and felt his way to the window, where the “imposter,” bél?tre scélérat, hung in state.
it is a fundamental principle that villains, when about to perpetrate their dark crimes, should express their wicked thoughts in “hurried whispers.” this is very foolish on the part of the villains; but it is not easy to see how novels could be written if it were otherwise. of course the romancers do not always overhear these “hurried whispers,” but the walls in the vicinity have ears, and probably the romancers get at them in that way.
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“now, then,” muttered jim, “i’ll teach ’em better than to leave me out of their plots till they have to let me in. charley and steve intend to come along for this to-morrow, do they, and take it away, and float it burning down the river? i’ll bet they won’t! i’ll burn it all to smoke and ashes now, as it hangs on its pins, and serve ’em right!”
“hum, this is jim’s treachery!” sneers the reader. “i was led to expect something better; i am disappointed.”
gentle reader, if you are a faithful peruser of novels, you must have a great fund of patience. draw, then, on that fund, and more of jim’s designs will presently be unfolded. draw on your imagination, also; for his treachery was never fully made known.
suiting the action to the word, jim fumbled in his pocket and took out a bunch of matches, which he had put there for this very purpose. he knew he was doing wrong, and his hand trembled as he struck a light. he knew that his terrible disease might seize him at any moment; and so, fearing to stay longer where he was, he hastily applied the light to the spectral figure, and turned to steal away.
the inflammable material of bél?tre scélérat’s clothes instantly caught fire, and he himself was soon ablaze.
“now to run and tell marmaduke he is fooled,” jim muttered.
in this way, poor simpleton, he thought to ease his conscience! but the “still small voice” will be deceived by no such flimsy excuses.
“then to yell ‘fire!’—oh, if any ghost should be up here, now,—if there are such things as ghosts,—this is the place for them! now, to get away.——ow! ow! ouowh!”
the cause of these unmusical yells from jim was that he heard hasty footsteps issuing from a room to the left, and then a ghost-like figure appeared in the flaring light of the burning impostor.
jim had almost expected to encounter something horrible, and when this apparition hove in sight his terror was all the more intense.
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setting up horrisonous howls, that would have been a credit to bob herriman himself, he forgot all about the dangerous place in the floor,—which, as has been said, the explorers discovered, carefully marked out, and avoided,—and rushed blindly upon it. a groan, a trembling, and it gave way beneath him with the crash of an earthquake.
marmaduke had just given the word to the priest for the second time, when a succession of frightful howls and yells of agony struck their ears, and a moment later a blinding cloud of dust, plaster, and splinters, pervaded the apartment.
jim, a scratched and woe-begone object, also fell.
thus the plotters’ little difficulty was obviated; thus a ghost came to them.
but that was not all. it so happened (rather, of course it happened) that sauterelle and the general were in the course of the faller.
before any of the demoralized plotters could think what was the matter, or even think at all, jim dropped heavily downward, and his feet caught in the rescued one’s outlandish headdress. it was rudely torn off, and henry’s aching head received so violent a wrench that he could have roared with the pain.
although jim’s fall was not stopped, its course was deflected, and his head and body were thrown furiously into marmaduke’s and stephen’s arms. he thus escaped with sundry painful bruises, owing perhaps his life to the accident of striking henry’s headdress and being thrown upon marmaduke and stephen.
these two, also, were stunned and slightly hurt; and a pair of unique goggles, that steve wore as a partial disguise, went the way of the hammer, the axe, and the band-box full of rusty tools.
confusion reigned for a few moments; but as soon as the general could think at all, his thoughts reverted to sauterelle.
“oh, where is lady sauterelle?” he cried.
he flew to henry’s side, to behold—oh what?
henry had seized his opportunity to strip off his disguise,[338] and now stood revealed in coat, vest, and pants—a very boy-like boy.
the plotters, somewhat recovered from their surprise, and seeing that no one was much the worse for the fright, saw the dupe’s look of horror and consternation, and could restrain themselves no longer. the long pent-up laughter burst from each mouth in one deafening roar. this was what they had plotted for, and it had come.
with a tragic and truly pathetic air, marmaduke threw up his hands, cried, in piteous tones, that the plotters will remember till their last hour, “i am betrayed!” and fled out of the house like a madman.
for the first time the boys felt heartily ashamed of themselves. they all ran out to call him back and beg his forgiveness, and discovered what they would have known before, if they had not been so engrossed with jim’s fall and henry’s unmasking.
the building was on fire and burning furiously! though it was not five minutes since jim struck his match, the fire had gained too great a hold to be extinguished.
jim was appalled. nothing was further from his thoughts than the burning of the prison-house; though a little reflection would have shown him that a figure fashioned of greasy clothes, and stuffed with rags, straw, shavings, and sundry valuables that slipped in unawares, could not burn within a few inches of a wooden building without setting it on fire.
“fire! fire!” yelled the heroes, hardly knowing whether to be delighted or otherwise at the prospect of such a bon-fire.
in the excitement of the moment the search after marmaduke was given up.
“are—are we all out, or is somebody burnt up?” will asked, wildly, but with rare presence of mind.
“oh, boys, i did it, but i didn’t mean to burn the house,” jim confessed. “all i wanted was to burn your impostor, and tell marmaduke the truth, and—ou! ou! ou! ou!” he shrieked. “there it is again! ou, ou!” and the boy with the chills took to his heels.
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jim practised running: on this occasion he was soon out of sight.
the rest looked in the direction pointed out by jim, and beheld a figure in white gliding towards them. was it a ghost, or some one wrapped up in a sheet, so foolish as to play the part of a ghost?
“oh, dear;” gasped steve, “what is going to happen next?”
all the boys were wrought up to a pitch of great excitement, and were more terrified than they cared to acknowledge. henry’s thoughts reverted to his greek history and nemesis.
but after a moment the sage observed, with his habitual philosophy, “well, if it’s the ghost that inhabited that house, he is wise in seeking other quarters, for it will soon be nothing but red-hot ashes.”
then, afraid that henry might think him weak enough to believe in ghosts, he added, hastily, “of course, you know, boys, that there are no such creatures as ghosts; only—”
at this juncture the speaker broke off abruptly, and whatever information he had to impart was lost. the apparition was now quite close to the boys, and as the last words left george’s lips, it flung off something very much like a sheet, and exclaimed, in a voice quite as human as ghostly:
“well, young gentlemen, since you hesitate to take me for a supernatural being, i shall reveal myself to you.”
“do it, then,” said steve, in street arab style. “do it, for we must be off to look for a comrade.”
“this to me!” cried the new-comer, angrily. “i’d have you know that i am benjamin stolz.”
“oh, horrors!” groaned steve. “it’s the man that owns ‘nobody’s house.’”
mr. stolz spoke again. (by the way, his full name was benjamin franklin stolz.) laying aside the bantering tones in which he first addressed them, he spoke fiercely:
“young men, i want to know who owns that burning house?”
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“the one straight ahead of us?” will asked, as if they were in the midst of a burning city, with buildings on fire on every side.
mr. stolz stooped, picked up a small stone, and flung it towards the fire, saying, “that is the building i have reference to, unhappy youth. if you can’t see it yet, i will carry you up to it. i repeat, who is supposed to own that place?”
“i am to blame for all this, mr. stolz,” charles had the courage to say. “i persuaded the boys to come and make use of it; but i thought it was so useless, and had been left idle so many years, that no one valued it. i beg pardon, mr. stolz.”
stolz hesitated. the boy’s willingness to receive all the blame touched him. “he is a fine little fellow,” he said to himself, “but now that i have started this i must go through it.”
charles gained, rather than lost, by his confession, yet he did not escape punishment. perhaps he did not expect that.
“well,” began mr. stolz, “think twice, or even four or five times, before you plan to ‘make use of’ the property of others again. when i choose to burn down my establishments, i shall do it myself, and not call in schoolboys to do it for me. did any of you ever hear what the law says about burning a man’s house? law, and the newspapers, and insurance agents, call it incendiarism. judges and juries call incendiarism a very nefarious occupation. now, don’t wait to see the walls collapse—begone! all of you! to-morrow i shall send a writ of summons to each of you! begone! good night.”
having discharged his horrible threat about the writ of summons, stolz turned and strode towards the blazing and roaring fire, a very odd smile on his lips.
the “incendiaries” did not see that smile, and they stood staring at his retreating figure, speechless and hopeless. this was the end of their plot! ah, its growth had been difficult and uneven—its end was sublimely tragical!
not one of them had accused jim of firing the building,[341] though, from his own confession, each one knew that jim only was guilty of the deed. however, they deserve no praise for this, since they were all so utterly confounded that not one of them remembered it. but as mr. stolz was the ghost that caused jim’s panic, flight, and fall, he must certainly have known all about it, and consequently it was better that they should hold their peace.
after a solemn silence, stephen asked faintly, “boys, what’s a writ of summons? isn’t it something awful?”
the sage brightened and answered him thus: “yes, steve, it is a dreadful instrument of justice to deliver culprits up to the fury of law—to trial, punishment, and torture.”
steve, who had a very vague notion of what the word instrument means, instantly thought of thumb-screws, racks, and divers other engines of torture, that our “chivalrous” forefathers were so ingenious as to invent and so diabolical as to use.
“boys,” said charles, “we are in a worse scrape than ever before. it would be an awful thing if we should be sent to prison! oh, it would kill my mother! henry, do you really think stolz could send us to prison?”
“i don’t know,” said henry, in a mournful voice, little above a whisper.
“look here, boys,” spoke the sage, with his time-honored phraseology, “we have lost track of marmaduke altogether. we must find out what has become of him.”
“o dear, if he is missing, i shall not care to live!” henry declared sincerely. “where do you suppose he is, boys? is he a boy to take such a thing very much to heart?”
“i’m afraid he is,” will acknowledged. “he takes everything so seriously that this will be almost too much for him.”
“why didn’t you tell me that before?” henry asked bitterly.
with wildly beating hearts the little band began to search for the missing one, calling him imploringly by name and begging his forgiveness. the search was continued till henry became so completely exhausted[342] that he could no longer drag himself along; and then it was incumbent on the others to take him home.
as they drew near the village, one of them proposed to stop at marmaduke’s home and inquire after him, in the faint hope that he might be there. the others agreed to this, but with little hope of receiving a favorable answer.
“is marmaduke at home?” charles asked timidly, as mr. fitz-williams opened the door.
“no, he is not,” came the answer, “and we are very uneasy about him.”
the plotters did not explain themselves, but turned away, more heart-sick than before. suppose that he should wander off, and be found dead some time afterwards, would not they be held guilty? would not they be goaded by remorse to the end of their days? or suppose that he should follow the slighted schoolboy’s bent, run away to sea, and never be heard of again for twenty years.
stephen was so distressed that he actually said to his fellow-sufferers: “boys, if he would only come back, i wouldn’t tease him about getting married. i intended to tease him about it for months; but i won’t now, if he will only come back; i won’t, not a bit!”
stephen was a boy of boys; and for him to say that was to express his contrition in the strongest possible terms.
