Whether the light, hung at the boat-house, deceived his sight—whether the slippery mud caused him to lose his footing—whether he was running too quickly and could not stop himself in time—or whether, in his irrepressible fear, he threw himself unconsciously in, to escape what might be behind him, will never be known. Certain it is, that the unhappy boy went plunge into the river, another and a last wild cry escaping him as the waters closed over his head.
It were surely a breach of politeness on our part not to attend Mr. Ketch in his impromptu evening visit! He shuffled along at the very top of his speed, his mouth watering, while the delicious odour of tripe and onions appeared to be borne on the air to his olfactory nerves: so strong is the force of fancy. Arrived at his destination, he found the shop closed. It was Mrs. Jenkins’s custom to close at seven from October to April; and the shutters had now just been put up. Mr. Ketch seized the knocker on the shop-door—there was no other entrance to the house—and brought it down with a force that shook the first-floor sitting-room, and startled Mr. Harper, the lay clerk, almost out of his armchair, as he sat before the fire. Mrs. Jenkins’s maid, a young person of seventeen, very much given to blacking her face, opened it.
“Be I in time?” demanded Ketch, his voice shaking.
“In time for what?” responded the girl.
“Why, for supper,” said Ketch, penetrating into the shop, which was lighted by a candle that stood on the counter, the one the girl had brought in her hand. “Is old Jenkins the bedesman come yet?”
“Old Jenkins ain’t here,” said she. “You had better go into the parlour, if you’re come to supper.”
Ketch went down the shop, sniffing curiously. Sharp as fancy is, he could not say that he was regaled with the scent of onions, but he supposed the saucepan lid might be on. For, as was known to Mr. Ketch, and to other of the initiated in tripe mysteries, it was generally thought advisable, by good housewives, to give the tripe a boil up at home, lest it should have become cold in its transit from the vendor’s. The girl threw open the door of the small parlour, and told him he might sit down if he liked; she did not overburden the gentleman with civility. “Missis’ll be here soon,” said she.
Ketch entered the parlour, and sat down. There was a fire in the grate, but no light, and there were not, so far as Ketch could see, any preparations yet for the entertainment. “They’re going to have it downstairs in the kitchen,” soliloquized he. “And that’s a sight more comfortabler. She’s gone out to fetch it, I shouldn’t wonder!” he continued, alluding to Mrs. Jenkins, and sniffing again strongly, but without result. “That’s right! she won’t let ‘em serve her with short onions, she won’t; she has a tongue of her own. I wonder how much beer there’ll be!”
He sat on pretty patiently, for him, about half an hour, and then took the liberty of replenishing the fire from a coal-box that stood there. Another quarter of an hour was passed much more impatiently, when Ketch began to grow uneasy and lose himself in all sorts of grave conjectures. Could she have arrived too late, and found the tripe all sold, and so had stopped out to supper herself somewhere? Such a thing as a run on the delicacy had occurred more than once, to Ketch’s certain knowledge, and tardy customers had been sent away disappointed, to wait in longing anticipations for the next tripe night. He went into a cold perspiration at the bare idea. And where was old Jenkins, all this time, that he had not come in? And where was Joe? A pretty thing to invite a gentleman out to an impromptu supper, and serve him in this way! What could they mean by it?
He groped his way round the corner of the shop to where lay the kitchen stairs, whose position he pretty well knew, and called. “Here, Sally, Betty—whatever your name is—ain’t there nobody at home?”
The girl heard, and came forth, the same candle in hand. “Who be you calling to, I’d like to know? My name’s Lidyar, if you please.”
“Where’s your missis?” responded Ketch, suffering the name to drop into abeyance. “Is she gone out for the tripe?”
“Gone out for what tripe?” asked the girl. “What be you talking of?”
“The tripe for supper,” said Ketch.
“There ain’t no tripe for supper,” replied she.
“There is tripe for supper,” persisted Ketch. “And me and old Jenkins are going to have some of it. There’s tripe and onions.”
The girl shook her head. “I dun know nothing about it. Missis is upstairs, fixing the mustard.”
Oh come! this gave a promise of something. Old Ketch thought mustard the greatest condiment that tripe could be accompanied by, in conjunction with onions. But she must have been a long time “fixing” the mustard; whatever that might mean. His spirits dropped again, and he grew rather exasperated. “Go up and ask your missis how long I be to wait?” he growled. “I was told to come here at seven for supper, and now it’s a’most eight.”
The girl, possibly feeling a little curiosity herself, came up with her candle. “Master ain’t so well to-night,” remarked she. “He’s gone to bed, and missis is putting him a plaster on his chest.”
The words fell as ice on old Ketch. “A mustard-plaster?” shrieked he.
“What else but a mustard-plaster!” she retorted. “Did you think it was a pitch? There’s a fire lighted in his room, and she’s making it there.”
Nothing more certain. Poor Jenkins, who had coughed more than usual the last two days, perhaps from the wet weather, and whose chest in consequence was very painful, had been ordered to bed this night by his wife when tea was over. She had gone up herself, as soon as her shop was shut, to administer a mustard-plaster. Ketch was quite stunned with uncertainty. A man in bed, with a plaster on his chest, was not likely to invite company to supper.
Before he had seen his way out of the shock, or the girl had done staring at him, Mrs. Jenkins descended the stairs and joined them, having been attracted by the conversation. She had slipped an old buff dressing-gown over her clothes, in her capacity of nurse, and looked rather en deshabille; certainly not like a lady who is about to give an entertainment.
“He says he’s come to supper: tripe and onions,” said the girl, unceremoniously introducing Mr. Ketch and the subject to her wondering mistress.
Mrs. Jenkins, not much more famous for meekness in expressing her opinions than was Ketch, turned her gaze upon that gentleman. “What do you say you have come for?” asked she.
“Why, I have come for supper, that’s what I have come for,” shrieked Ketch, trembling. “Jenkins invited me to supper; tripe and onions; and I’d like to know what it all means, and where the supper is.”
“You are going into your dotage,” said Mrs. Jenkins, with an amount of scorn so great that it exasperated Ketch as much as the words themselves. “You’ll be wanting a lunatic asylum next. Tripe and onions! If Jenkins was to hint at such a thing as a plate of tripe coming inside my house, I’d tripe him. There’s nothing I have such a hatred to as tripe; and he knows it.”
“Is this the way to treat a man?” foamed Ketch, disappointment and hunger driving him almost into the state hinted at by Mrs. Jenkins. “Joe Jenkins sends me down a note an hour ago, to come here to supper with his old father, and it was to be tripe and onions! It is tripe night!” he continued, rather wandering from the point of argument, as tears filled his eyes. “You can’t deny as it’s tripe night.”
“Here, Lydia, open the door and let him out,” cried Mrs. Jenkins, waving her hand imperatively towards it. “And what have you been at with your face again?” continued she, as the candle held by that damsel reflected its light. “One can’t see it for colly. If I do put you into that mask I have threatened, you won’t like it, girl. Hold your tongue, old Ketch, or I’ll call Mr. Harper down to you. Write a note! What else? He has wrote no note; he has been too suffering the last few hours to think of notes, or of you either. You are a lunatic, it’s my belief.”
“I shall be drove one,” sobbed Ketch. “I was promised a treat of—”
“Is that door open, Lydia? There! Take yourself off. My goodness, me! disturbing my house with such a crazy errand!” And, taking old Ketch by the shoulders, who was rather feeble and tottering, from lumbago and age, Mrs. Jenkins politely marshalled him outside, and closed the door upon him.
“Insolent old fellow!” she exclaimed to her husband, to whom she went at once and related the occurrence. “I wonder what he’ll pretend he has next from you? A note of invitation, indeed!”
“My dear,” said Jenkins, revolving the news, and speaking as well as his chest would allow him, “it must have been a trick played him by the young college gentlemen. We should not be too hard upon the poor old man. He’s not very agreeable or good-tempered, I’m afraid it must be allowed; but—I’d not have sent him away without a bit of supper, my dear.”
“I dare say you’d not,” retorted Mrs. Jenkins. “All the world knows you are soft enough for anything. I have sent him away with a flea in his ear; that’s what I have done.”
Mr. Ketch had at length come to the same conclusion: the invitation must be the work of the college gentlemen. Only fancy the unhappy man, standing outside Mrs. Jenkins’s inhospitable door! Deceived, betrayed, fainting for supper, done out of the delicious tripe and onions, he leaned against the shutters, and gave vent to a prolonged and piteous howl. It might have drawn tears from a stone.
In a frame of mind that was not enviable, he turned his steps homeward, clasping his hands upon his empty stomach, and vowing the most intense vengeance upon the college boys. The occurrence naturally caused him to cast back his thoughts to that other trick—the locking him into the cloisters, in which Jenkins had been a fellow-victim—and he doubled his fists in impotent anger. “This comes of their not having been flogged for that!” he groaned.
Engaged in these reflections of gall and bitterness, old Ketch gained his lodge, unlocked it, and entered. No wonder that he turned his eyes upon the cloister keys, the reminiscence being so strong within him.
But, to say he turned his eyes upon the cloister keys, is a mere figure of speech. No keys were there. Ketch stood a statue transfixed, and stared as hard as the flickering blaze from his dying fire would allow him. Seizing a match-box, he struck a light and held it to the hook. The keys were not there.
Ketch was no conjuror, and it never occurred to him to suspect that the keys had been removed before his own departure. “How had them wicked ones got in?” he foamed. “Had they forced his winder?—had they took a skeleton key to his door?—had they come down the chimbley? They were capable of all three exploits; and the more soot they collected about ‘em in the descent, the better they’d like it. He didn’t think they’d mind a little fire. It was that insolent Bywater!—or that young villain, Tod Yorke!—or that undaunted Tom Channing!—or perhaps all three leagued together! Nothing wouldn’t tame them.”
He examined the window; he examined the door; he cast a glance up the chimney. Nothing, however, appeared to have been touched or disturbed, and there was no soot on the floor. Cutting himself a piece of bread and cheese, lamenting at its dryness, and eating it as he went along, he proceeded out again, locking up his lodge as before.
Of course he bent his steps to the cloisters, going to the west gate. And there, perhaps to his surprise, perhaps not, he found the gate locked, just as he might have left it himself that very evening, and the keys hanging ingeniously, by means of the string, from one of the studded nails, right over the keyhole.
“There ain’t a boy in the school but what’ll come to be hung!” danced old Ketch in his rage.
He would have preferred not to find the keys; but to go to the head-master with a story of their theft. It was possible, it was just possible that, going, keys in hand, the master might refuse to believe his tale.
Away he hobbled, and arrived at the house of the head-master. Check the first!—The master was not at home. He had gone to a dinner-party. The other masters lived at a distance, and Ketch’s old legs were aching. What was he to do? Make his complaint to some one, he was determined upon. The new senior, Huntley, lived too far off for his lumbago; so he turned his steps to the next senior’s, Tom Channing, and demanded to see him.
Tom heard the story, which was given him in detail. He told Ketch—and with truth—that he knew nothing about it, but would make inquiries in the morning. Ketch was fain to depart, and Tom returned to the sitting-room, and threw himself into a chair in a burst of laughter.
“What is the matter?” they asked.
“The primest lark,” returned Tom. “Some of the fellows have been sending Ketch an invitation to sup at Jenkins’s off tripe and onions, and when he arrived there he found it was a hoax, and Mrs. Jenkins turned him out again. That’s what Master Charley must have gone after.”
Hamish turned round. “Where is Charley, by the way?”
“Gone after it, there’s no doubt,” replied Tom. “Here’s his exercise, not finished yet, and his pen left inside the book. Oh yes; that’s where he has gone!”
“Tom, where is Charles?”
“He is not in my pocket,” responded Tom Channing, who was buried in his studies, as he had been for some hours.
“Thomas, that is not the proper way to answer me,” resumed Constance, in a tone of seriousness, for it was from her the question had proceeded. “It is strange he should run out in the abrupt way you describe, and remain out so long as this. It is half-past nine! I am waiting to read.”
“The boys are up to some trick to-night with Mr. Calcraft, Constance, and he is one of them,” said Tom. “He is sure to be in soon.”
Constance remained silent; not satisfied. A nameless, undefined sort of dread was creeping over her. Engaged with Annabel until eight o’clock, when she returned to the general sitting-room, she found Charles absent, much to her surprise. Expecting him to make his appearance every moment, the time may have seemed to her long, and his absence all the more unaccountable. It had now gone on to half-past nine, and still he was not come in, and his lessons were not done. It was his hour for bed time.
Tom had more than usual to do that night, and it was nearly ten when he rose from his books. Constance watched him put them aside, and stretch himself. Then she spoke.
“Tom, you must go and find Charles. I begin to feel uneasy. Something must have happened, to keep him out like this.”
The feeling “uneasy” rather amused Tom. Previsions of evil are not apt to torment schoolboys. “I expect the worst that has happened may be a battle royal with old Ketch,” said he. “However, the young monkey had no business to cut short his lessons in the middle, and go off in this way, so I’ll just run after him and march him home.”
Tom took his trencher and flew towards the cathedral. He fully expected the boys would be gathered somewhere round it, not a hundred miles from old Ketch’s lodge. But he could not come upon them anywhere. The lodge was closed, was dark and silent, showing every probability that its master had retired for the night to sleep away his discomfiture. The cloisters were closed, and the Boundaries lay calm in the moonlight, undisturbed by a single footstep. There was no sign of Charles, or of any other college boy.
Tom halted in indecision. “Where can he have gone to, I wonder? I’m sure I don’t know where to look for him! I’ll ask at Yorke’s! If there’s any mischief up, Tod’s sure to know of it.”
He crossed the Boundaries, and rang at Lady Augusta’s door. Tod himself opened it. Probably he thought it might be one of his friends, the conspirators; certainly he had not expected to find Tom Channing there, and he looked inclined to run away again.
“Tod Yorke, do you know anything of Charles?”
“Law! how should I know anything of him?” returned Tod, taking courage, and putting a bold face upon it. “Is he lost?”
“He is not lost, I suppose; but he has disappeared somewhere. Were you in the game with old Ketch, to-night?”
“What game?” inquired Tod, innocently.
But at this moment Gerald, hearing Tom’s voice, came out of the sitting-room. Gerald Yorke had a little cooled down from his resentment against Tom. Since the decision of the previous day, nearly all Gerald’s wrath had been turned upon Mr. Pye, because that gentleman had not exalted him to the seniorship. So great was it, that he had no room to think of Tom. Besides, Tom was a fellow-sufferer, and had been passed over equally with himself.
“What’s the row?” asked Gerald.
Tom explained, stating what he had heard from Ketch of the trick the boys had played him; and Charley’s absence. Gerald, who really was not cognizant of it in any way, listened eagerly, making his own comments, and enjoying beyond everything the account of Ketch’s fast in the supper department. Both he and Tom exploded with mirth; and Tod, who said nothing, but listened with his hands in his pockets, dancing first on one leg, then on the other, nearly laughed himself into fits.
“What did they take out the cloister keys for?” demanded Gerald.
“Who’s to know?” said Tom. “I thought Tod was sure to be in it.”
“Don’t I wish I had been!” responded that gentleman, turning up the whites of his eyes to give earnestness to the wish.
Gerald looked round at Tod, a faint suspicion stealing over him that the denial was less genuine than it appeared. In point of fact, Mr. Tod’s had been the identical trencher, spoken of as having watched the effect of the message upon old Ketch. “I say, Tod, you were off somewhere to-night for about two hours,” said Gerald. “I’ll declare you were.”
“I know I was,” said Tod readily. “I had an appointment with Mark Galloway, and I went to keep it. If you skinned me alive, Channing, I couldn’t tell you where Miss Charley is, or where he’s likely to be.”
True enough in the abstract. Tom Channing stopped talking a short time longer, and then ran home. “Is Charley in yet?” was his first question.
No, Charley was not in; and the household now became seriously concerned. It was past ten. By leaving his lessons half done, and his pen inside his exercise-book—of which exercise he had not left many words to complete; but he had other studies to do—it was evident to them that he had not gone out intending to remain away. Indeed, if he wanted to go out in an evening, he always asked leave, and mentioned where he was going.
“Haven’t you found him?” exclaimed Judith, coming forward as Tom entered. “Where in the world can the child be?”
“Oh, he’s safe somewhere,” said Tom. “Don’t worry your old head, Judy.”
“It’s fit that somebody should worry their heads,” retorted Judith sharply to Tom. “He never stopped out like this before—never! Pray Heaven there’s no harm come nigh him!”
“Well done, Judy!” was Tom’s answer. “Harm! What harm is likely to have come to him? Helstonleigh has not been shaken by an earthquake to-night, to swallow him up; and I don’t suppose any greedy kite has descended from the skies and carried him off in her talons. You’ll make a simpleton of that boy till he’s twenty!”
Judith—who, truth to say, did look very much after Charley, loved him and indulged him—wasted no more words on infidel Tom, but went straight up to Hamish’s room, and knocked at the door. Hamish was in it, at his writing-table as usual, and Judith heard a drawer opened and shut before he came to her.
“Mr. Hamish, it’s very queer about the child!” said Judith. “I don’t half like it.”
“What! Has he not come in?”
“No, he’s not. And, just to look how he has left his books and his lessons about, is enough to prove that something or other must have kept him. I declare my heart’s all in a quake! Master Tom has been out, and can find no traces of him—though it’s hard to tell whether he troubled himself to look much. Boys are as careless one of another as so many young animals.”
“I will come down directly, Judith.”
He shut the door, right in front of Judith’s inquisitive nose, which was peering in to ascertain what there might be to see. Judith’s curiosity, in reference to her young master’s night employment, had increased rather than abated. Every night, night after night, as Hamish came home with the account-books of the office under his arm, and carried them straight to his bedroom, Judith watched him go up with jealous eyes. Constance also watched him: watched him in a far more uneasy frame of mind than could be Judith’s. Bringing home those books now, in Mr. Channing’s absence, was only too plain a proof to Constance that his night work must be connected with them: and a perfectly sick feeling would rush over her. Surely there could be nothing wrong with the accounts?
Hamish closed the door, shutting out Judy. She heard him putting things away: heard a lock turned, and the keys removed. Then he came forth, and went down with Judith.
The difficulty was, where to look for Charles. It was possible that he might have gone to the houses of any one of the schoolboys, and be staying there: if not very likely, still it was by no means impossible. Tom was despatched to Mr. Pye’s, who had some half dozen of the king’s scholars boarding in his house; and thence to other houses in the neighbourhood. All with the same result; all denied knowledge of Charles. The college bell struck eleven, the sound booming out in the silence of the night on their listening ears; and with that sound, Hamish grew alarmed.
They went out different ways: Hamish, Arthur, Tom, and Judith. Sarah was excessively anxious to make one of the searching party, but Judith imperatively ordered her to stop at home and mind her own business. Judy ran round and about the college, like any one wild; nothing extra on her shoulders, and the border of her mob-cap flying. But the old red walls were high, silent, and impenetrable; revealing nothing of Charles Channing. She stopped at the low wall, extending from the side of the boat-house to some of the prebendal residences, and glanced over at the river. The water was flowing tranquilly between its banks, giving no sign that a young child was drowning, or had been drowned there not many hours before. “No,” said Judy to herself, rejecting the doubt, which had come over her as improbable, “he can’t have got in there. We should have heard of it.”
She turned, and took a survey around. She did not know what to do, or where to look. Still, cold, shadowy it all lay; the cathedral, the old houses, the elm trees with their birds, at rest now. “Where can he have got to?” exclaimed Judith, with a touch of temper.
One thing was certain: it was of no use to wait where she was, and Judith went herself home again. Just beyond the house of Lady Augusta Yorke she encountered the head-master, who was walking towards his home. He said “Good night” to Judith, as he passed her; but she arrested him.
“We are in a fine way, sir! We can’t find Master Charles.”
“Not find Master Charles?” repeated Mr. Pye. “How do you mean?”
“Why, it happened in this way, sir,” said Judith. “He was at his lessons, as usual, with Master Tom, and he suddenly gets up and leaves them, and goes out, without saying a word to nobody. That was at seven, or a bit later; and he has never come in again.”
“He must be staying somewhere,” remarked Mr. Pye.
“So we all thought, sir, till it got late. He’s not likely to be staying anywhere now. Who’d keep him till this hour, terrifying of us all into fits? Ketch—”
“Holloa, Judy! Any luck?”
The interruption came from Tom Channing. He had discerned Judy’s cap from the other side of the Boundaries, and now came running across, unconscious that her companion was the head-master. Judy went on with her communication.
“Ketch, the porter, came to Master Tom an hour or two ago, complaining that the college boys had been serving him a trick to-night. They had pretended to invite him out somewhere to supper, and stole his cloister keys while he was gone. Now, sir, I’d not like to say too much against that surly-tempered brown bear,” went on Judy, “but if he has had anything to do with keeping the child out, he ought to be punished.”
Tom was up now, saw it was the master, and touched his trencher.
“Have you found your brother?” asked the master.
“No, sir. It is very strange where he can have got to.”
“What tricks have the boys been playing Ketch, to-night?” resumed Mr. Pye. “Your servant tells me that he has been round to you to complain of them.”
Tom went into a white heat. Judy ought to have kept her mouth shut. It was not his place to inform against the school, privately, to the master. “Y—es,” he hesitatingly said, for an untruth he would not tell.
“What was the complaint?” continued Mr. Pye. “Could this disappearance of your brother’s be connected with it?”
“No, sir, I don’t see that it could,” replied Tom.
“You ‘don’t see!’ Perhaps you’ll allow me to see, and judge. What had the boys been doing, Channing?” firmly spoke the master, perceiving his hesitation. “I insist upon knowing.”
Tom was at his wits’ ends. He might not defy the master, on the one hand; on the other, he knew the school would send him to Coventry for ever and a day, if he spoke; as he himself would have sent any other boy, in it, doing the same thing. He heartily wished Judy had been in Asia before she had spoken of it, and her tongue with her.
“Were you in the affair yourself, pray?” asked the master.
“No, sir, indeed I was not; and I do not know a single boy who was. I have heard nothing of it, except from Ketch.”
“Then what is your objection to tell me?”
“Well, sir, you know the rules we hold amongst ourselves,” said Tom, blurting out the truth, in his desperation. “I scarcely dare tell you.”
“Yes, you dare, Channing, when I command you to do so,” was the significant answer.
Tom had no resource left; and, very unwillingly, Ketch’s details were drawn from him, bit by bit. The sham invitation, the disappointment touching the tripe and onions, the missing the cloister keys when he reached home, and the finding them outside the west door.
“Did he enter the cloisters and examine them?” said the master, speaking hastily. A possibility had struck him, which had not struck any of the Channings; and it was curious that it had not done so.
“I think not, sir,” replied Tom.
“Then, that’s where Charles is, locked up in the cloisters!” said the master, the recollection of the former locking-up no doubt helping him to the conclusion. “The fact of the keys having been left hanging outside the cloister door might have been sufficient to direct your suspicions.”
Tom felt the force of the words, and was wondering how it was he had not thought of it, when a cry burst from Judith.
“If he is there, he will never come out alive! Oh, sir, what will become of us?”
The master was surprised. He knew it was not a desirable situation for any young boy; but “never come out alive” were strong terms. Judy explained them. She poured into the master’s ears the unhappy story of Charles having been frightened in childhood; of his propensity still to supernatural fears.
“Make haste round! we must have the cloisters opened immediately!” exclaimed the master, as all the full truth of the dread imparted by Judith became clear to him. “Channing, you have light heels; run on, and knock up Ketch.”
Tom tore off; never a lighter pair of heels than his, to-night; and the master and the old servant followed. The master’s sympathies, nay, his lively fears, were strongly awakened, and he could not leave the affair in this stage, late though the hour was.
They arrived, to find Tom pummelling at Ketch’s door. But to pummel was one thing, and to arouse Mr. Ketch was another. Mr. Ketch chose to remain deaf. “I’ll try the window,” said Tom, “He must hear; his bed is close at hand.”
He knocked sharply; and it at length elicited an answer from the drowsy gentleman, composed of growls and abuse.
“Get up!” called out Tom. “The keys of the cloisters are wanted.”
“Then they may be wanted!” responded old Ketch in a muffled tone, as if he were speaking from under the bed-clothes. “I’ll see you all furder before you get the keys from me.”
“Ketch, produce the keys this instant!” interposed the master. “You know my voice; Mr. Pye’s. How dare you?”
“I’ll ‘dare’ you all, if you don’t go away!” raved old Ketch, mistaking, or pretending to mistake, the disturbers for his enemies, the college boys. “It’s a second edition of the trick you played me this evening, is it? I’ll go to the dean with the first glimmer o’ daylight—”
“Ketch, I am the head-master. I have come for the cloister keys. There’s a boy locked in the cloisters!”
“Is there? Praise be given up for that! I wouldn’t unlock him for a mint o’ diaments. If you don’t be off, I’ll call the police.”
“Fire! fire!” shouted Judy, in a shrill tone, putting her mouth to the keyhole; for she despaired of gaining Ketch by any other means. “What an idiot you are, old Ketch! Do you want to be burnt up alive?”
“Fire!” shouted Tom, in stentorian tones. “Fire! fire!” And Ketch, whether he was really alarmed, or whether he recognized the head-master’s voice, and thought it imprudent to hold out any longer, tumbled out of bed, opened the door, and appeared before them in attire more airy than elegant. Another minute, and impetuous Tom would have burst the window in.
“Beg pardon,” said Ketch, ungraciously, to the master. “Them boys play me up such tricks, that I’m always thinking of ‘em. Where’s the fire?”
“I don’t think it’s anywhere,” said the master. “The cloister keys, Ketch: and make haste. Which of the boys played you that trick to-night?”
Ketch gave a yell, for the point was a sore one. “I never set eyes on one of ‘em! They’re too cunning for me.”
“Was my brother Charles one?” asked Tom, while Mr. Pye hastened away with the cloister keys.
“I tell ye I never see’d one! Can’t you believe?” Tom did believe, and went after the master and Judy.
They entered the cloisters, and shouted for Charles. Nothing answered them but the echoes. To see whether he was there, was impossible. Judy thought he might be lying somewhere, insensible from fright, and she ran up and down feeling into niches, as one demented. Mr. Pye sent Tom back to old Ketch’s for a light, which was not supplied without difficulty.
He was turning away with it, when Hamish came up. Hamish had been with all speed to Mr. Huntley’s, to question Harry, as senior of the school, whether he knew what the trick of the night had been, and what boys were in it. Harry, however, who was in bed, assured Hamish of his complete ignorance. But for Mr. Huntley’s veto, he would have got up and gone out to join in the search, and enjoyed it amazingly.
They carried the candle to every nook and corner of the cloisters, no result arising from it. Hamish and Tom climbed over and searched the burial-ground. He was not there. No signs, for their keen eyes, or for any others, remained of the night’s work: the college boys were cautious. A couple of matches, half-burnt, lay on the ground in the north quadrangle, but they told nothing. The boys were often lighting matches, as the master knew.
“I really think you must be mistaken in supposing Charles’s absence has to do with this trick played upon old Ketch—whatever it may have been,” he observed. “It does not appear that the boys have been in the cloisters. Had any of them been locked in here, here they would be still.”
There was no denying it, and they left the cloisters and closed them. The keys were conveyed to Ketch, who had to get out of bed again to receive them, which he did with a great amount of wrath. Mr. Pye thought it would be proved that Charles must be at the house of one of the boys, carelessness or accident having detained him. And then he wished them good night and went home.
Completely at a loss were they. Hamish, ever hopeful, thought Charles had perhaps returned home: and they bent their steps thither. No, no; Constance, Arthur, and curious Sarah, were all outside, looking every way. Constance was too agitated to remain indoors. Arthur had just returned home. He had been to the houses of some of the college boys, those with whom Charles was most intimate, but could obtain no tidings of him.
Constance burst into tears. She grew excessively alarmed, when Judy mentioned the doubt lest he had been shut in the cloisters. “But that fear is done away with,” said Hamish. “We have searched them thoroughly. Do not distress yourself, Constance.”
“There goes midnight!” exclaimed Judy.
“Ugh!” shivered Sarah. “I feel just as if somebody was walking over my grave, Judith.”
“If they were walking over you, it mightn’t be amiss,” reprimanded Judith. “Don’t talk such stuff as that, girl, in the young mistress’s ears.”
The words died away into silence, and they stood listening to the strokes of the deep-toned cathedral bell. With the last, twelve, another day had dawned upon the world. What would it bring forth for them?
“I shall go to the police-station,” said Hamish. “Constance, my dear, you had better not remain outside. Go indoors.”
It was well to say “Go indoors,” but in the agitation and suspense at that moment overwhelming Constance, “indoors” was not so easy to bear. Hamish strode off, Tom following him. Arthur remained with his sister, waiting and watching still.
And so they waited and watched through the livelong night. Hamish was at work; the police were at work; Tom was at work: but neither sign nor trace could be found of Charles Channing.
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!”