"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 a.s.sistants 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 circ.u.mstances 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 G.o.d 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 cla.s.sical atmosphere of Galloway House pa.s.sed 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 cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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!"