"Of course I did! How could I help it when you couldn't see your hand before your face?"

Wheeler buried himself in the bedclothes and roared with laughter.

"You wouldn't have laughed if it had been you," continued the outraged Griffin. "I was as nearly drowned as anything. I should have been if it hadn't been for a fellow with a lantern."

"Go away! drowned!" scoffed Bailey, unconsciously repeating the carter's words; "why, there isn't enough water to drown a cat!"

"What did you go and leave us for like that?" asked Ellis.

"Do you think I was going to mess about in the rain all night while you two were squabbling on top of each other in the mud?"

"I call it a mean thing to do!"

"Who cares what you call it?"

"And if it weren't so jolly late, I'd give you something for yourself."

"Oh, would you? You'd give me something for myself! I like that! You wait till the morning, and then perhaps I'll give you something for yourself instead!"

Unconscious of the compliments which his affectionate pupils were bandying from one to the other, Mr. Fletcher returned to his wife, seated in the parlour. His whole air was one of depression, as of one who had no longer spirit enough to fight with fortune.

"Well, it will be over to-morrow!" he said. "I don't think I'm much good at school-keeping; I'm not strong enough; I'm not sufficiently able to impress my influence on others." Going to the mantelshelf he leaned his head upon his hand. "I suspect I've failed as a schoolmaster because I deserved to fail."

Then, forgetting the heroes of the night, his wife began to comfort him.

Chapter VIII

PREPARING FOR FLIGHT

That night Bertie Bailey dreamed a dream. In fact, he dreamed several dreams; his slumber-time was pa.s.sed in dreamland, journeying from dream to dream.

He dreamed of the Land of Golden Dreams; of Mr. Bankes and Washington Villa; of a boy traversing a road which ran right around the world; of tumbling into ponds and scrambling out of them; of some mysterious country, peopled by a race of giants, to which there came a boy, who, single-handed, brought them low, and claimed the country for his own, and the soil of that land consisted of gold and silver, with judicious variations of precious stones. In his dreams he saw weapons flashing in the air, and he heard the sound of strange instruments of music.

Just before he woke he dreamed the most vivid dream of all. A moment before all had been a chaos of bewilderment, but all at once he found himself alone, in the centre of some wild place, not quite sure what sort of place it was, nor where, nor of anything about it, but he knew that it was wild. A voice was heard in the air, and he knew that it was the voice of Mr. George Washington Bankes. The voice kept repeating, "A life of adventure's the life for me!" and every time the words were uttered the boy's heart leapt up within him, and he went bounding on. The one voice became several, the world was full of voices, yet he knew that they all belonged to the original Mr. George Washington Bankes; and over and over again they repeated the same refrain, "A life of adventure's the life for me!" till the whole world was alive with it, and birds and beasts and sticks and stones caught up the same refrain, "A life of adventure's the life for me!" and the boy's heart was filled with a great and wondrous exultation. But all at once the voices ceased; all was still; and the boy found that he was standing in front of a mighty mountain, which filled the world with darkness, and barred the way in front of him. And he was beginning to be afraid, when out of the silence and the darkness came, in a still small whisper--which he knew to be the whisper of Mr.

George Washington Bankes--the words, "A life of adventure's the life for me!" and they put courage into his heart, and he stretched out his arm and touched the mountain, and, behold! at his touch it was cleft asunder, and in its bosom were all the treasures of the earth.

But it was unfortunately at this point that he awoke. It was not unnatural that for some moments he should have refused to have acknowledged the fact--to confess that he really was awake, and that it had been nothing but a dream.

It was broad daylight. The sun was peeping through the windows, along the edges of the ill-fitting blinds. It was nothing but a dream. As he began to realize the fact of the gleaming sunshine, even he was obliged to admit that it had been nothing but a dream. He turned in his bed with a dissatisfied grunt.

"I never dreamed anything like that before, nothing half so real! It seemed as if I had only to put out my hand to touch that mountain now."

But it only seemed, for there was no mountain there, only a coverlet, and a sheet, and a blanket or two, and a bolster, and a mattress, and a bed. Bertie lay on his back, with his eyes closed, attempting, by an effort of his will, to bring back the vanished dream. And to some extent he succeeded, for as he lay quiescent he seemed to hear, ringing in his ears, the words he had heard in his dream--

"A life of adventure's the life for me!"

He seemed so certainly to hear them that, just as they had done in his dream, they filled him with a sudden fire. Thoroughly aroused, he sat up in bed, grasping the bedclothes with eager hands. And to himself he said, half beneath his breath, "A life of adventure's the life for me!"

The other boys were still asleep in the little iron bedsteads on either side of him, but he made no attempt to recompose himself to slumber. He remained sitting up in bed, his knees huddled up to his chin, engaged in a very unwonted act for him, the act of thinking.

The events of the night before were vividly before him, but princ.i.p.ally among them, a giant in the foreground, was the figure of Mr. George Washington Bankes.

"Why don't you run away?" Mr. Bankes' question rang in his ears.

"A life of adventure's the life for me!" Those other words of Mr.

Bankes, which had been with him through the dream-haunted night, still danced before his eyes.

Than Bertie Bailey a less romantic-looking youth one could scarce conceive. But history tells us that some of the greatest heroes of romance, real, live, flesh-and-blood heroes, who actually at some time or other did exist, were anything but romantic in their persons.

Perhaps Bailey was one of these. Anyhow, stowed away in some out-of-the-way corner of his unromantic-looking person was a vein of romance of the most p.r.o.nounced and unequivocal kind.

His range of reading was not wide, yet he had his heroes of fiction none the less. They were rather a motley crew, and if he had been asked the question, say in an examination paper, "Who is your favourite hero? give a short sketch of his life," he would have hesitated once or twice before he would have written d.i.c.k Turpin, Robin Hood, Robinson Crusoe, or Jack the Giant-Killer. Perhaps he would have hesitated still longer before he had attempted to sketch the life of any one of them. Yet, had he told the truth, the gentleman selected would have been one of these.

Possibly in the act of selection his greatest difficulty would have lain. He never could quite make up his mind which of the four gentlemen named above he liked the best. There were points about d.i.c.k Turpin which struck his fancy. He would rather have ridden that ride to York than have had ten thousand pounds. It would have been worth his while to have been d.i.c.k Turpin if only to possess that horse of horses, Black Bess, the coal-black steed of his heart's desire, though it may be mentioned in pa.s.sing that up to the present moment Bertie Bailey had never figured upon a horse's back. He had once ridden a donkey from Ramsgate to Pegwell Bay, but a donkey was not Black Bess.

On the other hand, there was no part of England with which he was better acquainted--theoretically--than the glades of Sherwood Forest.

To have lived in those glades with Robin Hood, Bailey would heave a great sigh at the prospect; ah, that he only could! Yet certainly one had only to speak of the desert island, and of Robinson Crusoe on its lonely sh.o.r.e, for Bertie to feel a wild longing to plough the distant main, a longing which was scarcely consistent with his desire for the glades of Sherwood Forest. It is the fashion to sneer at fairy tales, and to speak of them as though they were beneath the supposit.i.tious dignity of the common noun boy, and certainly the marvellous history and adventures of Jack the Giant-Killer belong to the domain of the fairies. Possibly Bertie would have been himself ashamed to own his partiality for that hero of the nursery; and yet, to have had Jack's courage and strength and skill, to have slaughtered giants and taken castles and rescued maidens--Bertie sometimes dreamt of himself as another Jack, and then always with a rapture too deep for words.

Perhaps his real, ideal, and favourite hero would have consisted of a judicious combination of the four--something of d.i.c.k Turpin, and something of Robin Hood, and something of Robinson Crusoe, and something of Jack the Giant-Killer. Take all these somethings and mix them well together, and you would have had the man for Bailey.

Emphatically, although almost unconsciously, in all his waking dreams, a life of adventure had been the life for him.

Mr. George Washington Bankes had applied the match to the powder. As he thought of all that gentleman had said, even in the cool of the morning, all his soul was on fire. Seeing him in his nightshirt of doubtful cleanliness, and with his touzled hair, you might not have supposed that there was fire in his soul, but there was. Run away! He had heard of boys running away from school before to-day.

Boys had run away from Mecklemburg House, and there were stories of one who, within quite recent times, had made a dash for liberty. Some said he had got as far as Windsor, some said Dorking, before he had changed his mind and decided to come back again. But he had come back again. Bailey made up his mind that when he ran away he would never come back again; never! or, at any rate, not till he had traversed the world in several different directions, as Mr. George Washington Bankes had done.

It had already become a question of _when_ he ran away. With that quickness in arriving at a decision which, so some tell us, is the sure sign of a commanding intellect, he had already decided that he would; there only remained the question of time and opportunity.

"Why don't you run away?" Mr. Bankes had asked. Yes, why, indeed?

especially if one had only to run away to step at once into the Land of Golden Dreams!

When the boys took their places in the schoolroom after breakfast, prepared for morning school, a startling announcement was made to them by Mr. Fletcher. Bailey and his friends had expected that something would be said to them on the subject of their escapade of the night before; but so far, so far as those in authority were concerned, their expectations had been disappointed. They had been sufficiently cross-examined by their fellow-pupils, and in spite of a slight suggestive foreboding of something unpleasant to come, when they perceived how their proceedings appeared in the eyes of their colleagues, they were almost inclined to look upon themselves somewhat in the light of heroes. Griffin, indeed, had not heard the last of the pond, and it was not of the tragic side of his misadventure that he heard the most. There were some disagreeable remarks made by personal friends who would not see that he had run imminent risk of being drowned. He almost began to wish that he had been.

"You wouldn't have laughed at it then," he said. But they laughed at it now.

But neither from Mr. Till, nor from Mr. Shane, nor from Mr. Fletcher, nor from the far more terrible Mrs. Fletcher, had either of the young gentlemen heard a word.

And just when they were preparing for morning school Mr. Fletcher made his startling announcement.

At first the quartett thought, not unreasonably, that his remarks were going to have particular reference to them and to their misdoings, but they were wrong. The headmaster was seated at his desk, in a seemingly more than usually preoccupied mood; but he too often was preoccupied in school, so they paid no heed, and got out their books and slates, and other implements of study, with the ordinary din and clatter.

Suddenly he spoke.

"Boys, I want to speak to you."

The boys looked at him, and the quartett looked at each other. Mr.

Fletcher did not raise his head, but with his eyes fixed on the desk in front of him continued to speak as though he found considerable difficulty in saying what he had to say.