a grey dusky morning, enveloped in fog, succeeded to the fine night. before seven o’clock—so watchful and alert are boys when mischief is afloat—most of those who had been in the conspiracy were assembled, and waiting round the schoolroom doors. generally, they could tear up at the twelfth moment. they would not have missed the sight of charles channing’s arrival for half-a-crown apiece, so curious were they to see how he looked, after his fright. as it happened, it was not at any of their homes that inquiries had been made the previous night; not one of them was, to say, intimate with charley: they were most of them older than he. consequently, they knew nothing of the search. tod yorke, who did know of it, had not yet arrived. of all the king’s scholars, none were marked late more frequently than master tod.
the senior boy had gone to the head-master’s for the keys as usual, and now came down the cloisters, clanking them in his hand.
“has charles channing turned up?” he called out, before he was well abreast of them.
pierce senior choked away his inclination to laughter, which the sound of the name excited, and saucy bywater answered. “where should he turn up from, huntley? has he been swallowed?”
“hamish channing came to our house last night, ages after i was in bed, saying they couldn’t find him,” replied huntley. “what was in the wind last night with old calcraft?”
the boys looked at him demurely; and huntley, receiving no reply, unlocked the schoolroom and entered it. they remained behind, winking at each other, and waiting still for charles. it wanted yet a few minutes to seven.
“i say, what d’ye think?” whispered bywater. “after i had got our sheet smuggled in, all right, and was putting it on the bed, i found two big holes burnt in it. won’t there be a commotion when my old aunt finds it out! she’ll vow i have been reading in bed. that was you, pierce senior!”
“i’m sure i never burnt it,” retorted pierce. “it was the flame did it, if anything.”
“here comes bill simms!” exclaimed bywater, when their smothered laugh was over. “what has he been doing to himself? he’s as white as the ghost!”
mr. bill simms assuredly did look white. he had a pale face at the best of times, and it was embellished with straw-coloured hair. but at the present moment it had turned ghastly, and his frame seemed shaking as he came along.
“what on earth has taken you, simms?” demanded hurst.
“oh, goodness!” uttered simms. “i wish i was well out of this! they are saying there’s a college boy drowned!”
“what?” cried the boys, gathering round him.
“there was a crowd down by the boat-house as i came along,” responded simms, as well as he could speak for his chattering teeth. “i asked a fellow what it was, and he said he didn’t rightly know, but he thought one of the college boys had been found drowned in the water.”
some of the gentlemen-listeners’ faces turned as pale as mr. bill simms’s; as pale as each conscience. bywater was the first to gather courage.
“it’s not obliged to be charley channing, if there is any one drowned.”
“but it’s sure to be him,” chattered simms, his teeth as crazy as his grammar. “griffin junior says arthur channing went to their house last night at twelve, and said they couldn’t find charley.”
the consternation into which this news plunged the guilty ones is not easily described. a conviction that it was charles channing who was drowned, overtook them all. schoolboys are not quite without hearts, and they would have given all they possessed, in that moment, to see charles come flying amongst them, as usual. some of them began to wish they were without necks; for if charles had come to an untimely end through their work, they might stand a chance of furnishing employment to the veritable mr. calcraft, on their own score. tod yorke came leaping up in delight.
“oh, wasn’t it good! the young one—”
“hold your noise, tod! they are saying he’s dead.”
“who’s dead?” wondered tod.
“charley channing. a college boy was found in the river, drowned.”
“oh, that be hanged!” exclaimed tod, half in mocking disbelief, half in awful fear. “it can’t be, you know. who says it?”
“there’s seven! we must go in, or huntley will be on to us. mind!” added pierce senior, for he was the speaker, “we must all keep each other’s counsel, and be in one tale—that we know nothing at all about it.”
they slunk into school. but that the senior boy was occupied with his new duty—the calling over of the roll—he might have observed that something was wrong. to play up a bit of mischief is the legitimate privilege of college boys; but to have led to a companion’s death is a terror-striking affair; and their countenances betrayed that it was so.
before the roll was finished, the head-master was in school. tom channing—it was late for him—entered afterwards. the master beckoned to him.
“is charles found?”
“no, sir. we cannot learn any tidings of him at all. we have not been to bed, any of us; and the police are searching also.”
had tom channing come from the other side of the boundaries, near the boat-house, perhaps he might have been able to give a different account.
the master made no comment then. he motioned tom to his desk, and gave the word for prayers. as the boys were rising from their knees, hamish channing entered the school, attended by mr. ketch.
hamish approached the master, who shook hands with him. ketch remained snarling and grinning defiance at the door, shaking his fist and his old teeth covertly at the boys. if looks could have blown up a room, the college school had certainly gone aloft then.
“i hear you have not found the boy?” said the master to hamish. “it is very singular.”
“we have not found him. mr. pye,” continued hamish, gravely, “i come to demand of your courtesy an immediate investigation into the doings of the college boys last night. that the disappearance of charles is in some measure connected with it, we cannot do otherwise than believe. i have brought ketch with me that he may tell his own tale.”
ketch was marshalled forward and ordered to tell his tale, and the business of the school was suspended. ketch told it distinctly enough; but he could not forbear enlarging upon his cruel disappointment over the tripe and onions, and it sent the school into convulsions. in the midst of it, tom channing breathed freely; ketch’s preferring the complaint, did away with the unpleasantness he had feared might arise, through having been forced to disclose it to the master.
“i should be sorry to have displeasure visited upon the boys,” resumed hamish. “indeed, i should esteem it a favour, sir, if you will not punish them for any disclosure that may arise through this step which i have taken. i dare say,” he added, turning his laughing gaze upon them, “that i should have been one of the ringleaders myself, in my school days, therefore it would not be fair for me to bring punishment upon them. i only wish to know which of the school were in it, that i may make inquiries of them whether charles was one of them or not; and, if he was, what they know of his movements afterwards.”
the address was fair and candid; so was hamish’s face; and some of the conspirators, in their good feeling, might have freely confessed, but for the something just whispered to them by simms. that closed their lips.
“do you hear?” said the master, speaking sharply, for he had rather, ten times over, that the school frankly avowed mischief, when brought to book: he was never half so severe if they were so. “why are you silent?”
bill simms, who had the bump of conscientiousness largely developed, with a wholesome dread of consequences, besides being grievously timid, felt that he could not hold out long. “oh, murder!” he groaned to mark galloway, next to whom he sat: “let’s tell, and have done with it.”
mark turned cold with fear. “you’re a pretty fellow!” he uttered, giving him a tremendous kick on the shins. “would you like us all to be tried for our lives?” a suggestion which made matters worse; and bill simms’s hair began to stand on end.
“huntley, have you any cognizance of this?” demanded mr. pye.
“none, sir.” and so said the three seniors under him.
“boys!” said the master, bringing his cane down upon the desk in a manner he was accustomed to do when provoked: “i will come to the bottom of this business. that several of you were in it, i feel sure. is there not one of you sufficiently honest to speak, when required so to do?”
certain of the boys drooped their conscious faces and their eyelids. as to bill simms, he felt ready to faint.
“what have you done with charles channing?” thundered the master. “where have you put him? where is he gone? i command you to speak! let the senior of those who were in it speak! or the consequences be upon your own heads.”
the threat sounded ominous in the ears of bill simms: he saw himself, in prospective, exposed to all the horrors of a dungeon, and to something worse. with a curious noise, something between a bark and a groan, he flung himself with his face on the floor, and lay there howling.
“mr. simms,” said the master, “what has taken you? were you the chief actor in this matter?”
all considerations had disappeared from mr. simms’s mind except the moment’s terror. he forgot what would be his own position in the school, if he told, or—as they would have expressed it—turned sneak. impelled by fear, he was hardly conscious of his words; hardly responsible for them.
“it wasn’t me,” he howled. “they all know i didn’t want the trick played upon him. i told them that it had killed a boy down by our farm, and it might kill channing. they know i told them.”
the master paused. “walk here, simms.”
simms picked himself up from the ground and walked there. a miserable object he looked; his eyes red, his teeth chattering, his face white, and his straw-coloured hair standing on end.
the master leaned his arms upon his desk, and brought his face almost into contact with the frightened one. “what trick did you play upon charles channing?”
“‘twasn’t me, sir,” sobbed simms. “i didn’t want it done, i say, o-o-o-o-o-o-h! i didn’t!”
“what trick was played upon him?”
“it was a ghost dressed up to frighten him, and he passed through the cloisters and saw it. it wasn’t me! i’ll never speak another word, if it was me!”
“a ghost!” repeated the master in astonishment, while ketch stretched his old neck forward, and the most intense interest was displayed by the school.
“they did it with a sheet and a blue flame,” went on simms; who, now that the ice was broken, tried to make a clean breast of it, and grew more alarmed every moment. “it wasn’t me! i didn’t want it done, and i never lent a hand to the dressing up. if little channing is dead, it won’t be fair to hang me.”
“who was in the plot?” was the next question of the master. and simms enumerated them. the master, stern and grim, beckoned to the several gentlemen to walk up, and to range themselves before him. “the lad has run some distance in his terror,” observed the master aside to hamish, as he remembered what judith had told him the previous night. “you will see him home in the course of the day.”
“i trust we may!” replied hamish, with marked emphasis.
bit by bit, word by word, the master drew the whole truth from the downcast lads. pierce senior looked dogged and obstinate: he was inwardly vowing unheard-of revenge against mr. simms. probably most of them were doing the same.
“i knowed it was them! i knowed it couldn’t be nobody but them!” broke forth old ketch, summarily interrupting the proceedings. “you sees now, sir, what incorrigible—”
“silence!” said the master, raising his hand. “i can deal with this without your assistance, ketch. hurst, who concocted this infamous plot?”
hurst—who was the senior of the conspirators, with regard to his position in the school, though not so old as pierce senior—could not answer it definitively. it was concocted between them, he said; not by one more than by another.
“did you not know that a trick, such as this, has deprived men of reason?” continued the master. “and you play it upon a young and defenceless boy! i am at a loss how to express my sense of your conduct. if any ill shall have happened to him through it, you will carry it on your consciences for ever.”
remembering what they had just heard, the boys’ consciences had begun to suffer already.
“who personated the ghost?” continued the master.
“pierce senior.” the answer came from simms. the others would not have given it.
“i might have guessed that,” was the remark of the master, who had no great love for the gentleman named. “i might have known that if there was a boy in the college school who would delight to put himself forward to trample on one younger and more sensitive than himself, it would be pierce senior. i’ll give you something to remember this work by, mr. pierce. yorke!”
gerald yorke knew what he was called for. he was the tallest and strongest of all. the school knew also; and a murmur of excitement went round. pierce senior was going to be hoisted.
only in very flagrant cases was the extreme punishment of flogging resorted to by the present master. it had been more common with his predecessor. of course its rarity made it all the more impressive when it did come.
“make ready,” said the master to pierce senior, unlocking his desk, and taking out a birch as big as a besom.
pierce turned green and white, without help from any blue flame, and slowly began to obey. there might be no resistance. the school hushed itself into suspense, and mr. ketch’s legs were on the point of taking a dance of ecstasy. a minute or two, and the group formed the centre of the upper part of the room. yorke supported the great boy whose back was bared, while the daunted faces and eager eyes were strained eagerly from around. the head-master took his place, and his birch was raised in the air to come down with a heavy stroke, when a commotion was heard at one of the desks, and stephen bywater rushed forward.
“stop, sir!” he said to the master. “if you will let pierce go, i will take the punishment.”
the master’s arm with its weapon dropped by his side, and he turned his astonished gaze upon bywater.
“i had more to do with planning the trick than pierce had, sir, so it’s only just that i should be the scapegoat. we fixed upon pierce to personate the ghost because he was tall and lanky. and a flogging is not much to my skin,” added honest, impudent bywater.
“so you were the planner of it, were you, mr. bywater?” demanded the angry master.
“in a great measure i was, sir. if i do go in for mischief, it shall not be said that i let others suffer for it. little channing had offended me, and i wished to serve him out. but i never thought to do him harm.”
in the perplexity of deciding what he ought to do, when official proceedings were interrupted in this unprecedented way, the master hesitated. what he would have done is uncertain—flogged pierce first and bywater afterwards, perhaps—but at that moment there occurred another interruption, and a more serious one.
diggs, the man who lived at the boat-house, had entered the school, and was asking to speak to the head-master. catching sight of the signs of the ceremony about to be performed, he waited for no permission, but went forward at once, a college cap in his hand, and his voice trembling with excitement. its excitement was not lessened when he recognized hamish channing.
“i am the bearer of bad news, gentlemen,” he said, addressing them both. “i fear one of the young college lads was drowned last night by my boat-house. we have picked up his cap this morning. it was poor little master channing.”
hamish controlled his emotion better than did the rev. mr. pye. the latter turned his eyes on the horrified school, himself equally horrified, and then signified to pierce senior to dress himself—to bywater to retire to his place. “the affair has become serious,” he observed, “and must be dealt with differently. poor child! poor little channing!”
and the boys, in their emotion, broke into an echoing wail. “poor little channing! poor little channing!”
