When Walter went to Dr Lane in the evening, the Doctor inquired kindly and carefully into the nature of his offence. This, unfortunately, was clear enough, and Walter was far too ingenuous to attempt any extenuation of it. Even if he had not been intentionally idle, it was plain, on his own admission, that he had been guilty of the greatest possible insubordination and disrespect. These offences were rare at Saint Winifred's, and especially rare in a new boy. Puzzled as he was by conduct so unlike the boy's apparent character, and interested by his natural and manly manner, yet Dr Lane had in this case no alternative but the infliction of corporal punishment.

Humiliated again, and full of bitter anger, Walter returned to the great schoolroom, where he was received with sympathy and kindness by the others in his cla.s.s. It was the dark part of the evening before tea-time, and the boys, sitting idly round the fire, were in an apt mood for folly and mischief. They began a vehement discussion about Paton's demerits, and called him every hard name they could invent. Walter took little part in this, for he was smarting too severely under the sense of oppression to find relief in mere abuse; but, from his flashing eyes and the dark scowl that sat so ill on his face it was evident that a bad spirit had obtained the thorough mastery over all his better and gentler impulses.

"Can't we do something to serve the fellow out?" said Anthony, one of the boys in Walter's dormitory.

"But _what_ can we do?" asked several.

"What, indeed?" asked Henderson, mockingly; and as it was his way to quote whatever he had last been reading, he began to spout from the peroration of a speech which he had seen in the paper--"Aristocracy, throned on the citadel of power, and strong in--"

"What a fool you are, Henderson," observed Franklin, another of the group; "I'll tell you what we can do: we'll burn that horrid black book in which he enters the detentions and impositions."

"Poor book!" said Henderson; "what pangs of conscience it will suffer in the flames! Give it not the glory of such martyrdom. Walter," he continued, in a lower voice, "I hope that you'll have nothing to do with this humbug?"

"I will though, Henderson; if I'm to have nothing but canings and floggings, I may just as well be caned and flogged for _something_ as for _nothing_."

"The desk's locked," said Anthony; "we shan't be able to get hold of the imposition-book."

"I'll settle that," said Walter; "here, just hand me the poker, Dubbs."

"I shall do no such thing," said Daubeny quietly, and his reply was greeted with a shout of derision.

"Why, you poor coward, Dubbs," said Franklin, "you _couldn't_ get anything for handing the poker."

"I never supposed I could, Franklin," he answered; "and as for being a coward, the real cowardice would be to do what's absurd and wrong for fear of being laughed at or being kicked. Well, you may hit me," he said quietly, as Franklin twisted his arm tightly round, and hit him on it, "but you can't make me do what I don't choose."

"We'll try," said Franklin, twisting his arm still more tightly, and hitting harder.

"You'll try in vain," answered Daubeny, though the tears stood in his eyes at the violent pain.

"Drop his arm, you Franklin," indignantly exclaimed Henderson, who, though he was always teasing Daubeny, was very fond of him; "drop his arm, or, by Jove! you'll find that two can play at that. Dubbs is quite right, and you're a set of a.s.ses if you think you'll do any good by burning the punishment book. I've got the poker, and you shan't have it to knock the desk open. I suppose Paton can afford sixpence to buy another book; and enter a tolerable fresh score against you for this besides."

"But he won't remember my six hundred lines, and four or five detentions," said Walter. "Here, give me the poker."

"Pooh! pooh! Evson, of course he'll remember them. Here, I'll help you with the lines; I'll do a couple of hundred for you, and the rest you can write with two pens at a time; it won't take you an hour. I'll show you the two-pen dodge; I'll admit you into the two-pen-etralia. Like Milton, you shall 'touch the slender tops of various quills.' No, no,"

he continued, in a playful tone in order not to make Walter in a greater pa.s.sion than he was, "you can't have the poker; anyone who wants that must take it from me _vi et armis_."

"It doesn't matter; this'll do as well; and here goes," said Walter, seizing a wooden stool. "There's the desk open for you," he said, as he brought the top of the stool with a strong blow against the lid, and burst the lock with a great crash.

"My eyes! we _shall_ get into a row," said Franklin, opening his eyes to ill.u.s.trate his exclamation.

"Well, what's done's done; let's all take our share," said Anthony, diving his hand into the desk. "Here's the imposition-book for you, and here goes leaf number one into the fire; you can tear out the next if you like, Franklin."

"Very well," said Franklin; "in for a penny in for a pound; there _goes_ the second leaf."

"And here the third; over ankles over knees," said Barton, another of those present.

"Proverbial Fool-osophy," observed Henderson, contemptuously, as Burton handed him the book. "Shall I be a silly sheep like the rest of you, and leap over the bridge because your leader has? I suppose I must, though it's very absurd." He wavered and hesitated; sensible enough to disapprove of so useless a proceeding, he yet did not like to be thought afraid. He minded what fellows would _think_.

"Do what's right," said Daubeny, "and shame the devil. Here, give me the book. Now, you fellows, you've torn out these leaves, and done quite mischief enough. Let me put the book back, and don't be like children who hit the fender against which they've knocked their heads."

"Or dogs that bite the stick they've been thrashed with," said Henderson. "You're right, Dubbs, and I respect you; ay, you fellows may sneer if you like, but I advised you not to do it, and I won't make myself an idiot because you do."

"Never mind," drawled Howard Tracy. "I hate Paton, and I'll do anything to spite him," whereupon he s.n.a.t.c.hed the book from Daubeny, and threw it entire into the flames. Poor Tracy had been even in more serious sc.r.a.pes with Mr Paton than Walter had; his vain manner was peculiarly abhorrent to the master, who took every opportunity of snubbing him; but nothing would pierce through the thick cloak of Tracy's conceit, and fully satisfied with himself, his good looks, and his aristocratic connections, he sat down in contented ignorance, and despised learning too much to be in the least put out by being invariably the last in his form.

"What, is there nothing left for me to burn?" said Walter, who sat glowering on the high iron fender, and swinging his legs impatiently.

"Let's see what else there is in the desk. Here are a pack of old exercises, apparently; they'll make a jolly blaze. Stop, though, _are_ they old exercises? Well, never mind; if not, so much the better. In they shall go."

"Stop! what _are_ you doing, Walter?" said Henderson, catching him by the arm; "you know these can't be old exercises. Paton always puts _them_ in his waste-paper basket, not in his desk. Oh, Walter, what _have_ you done?"

"The outside sheets were exercises anyhow," said Walter gloomily.

"Here, it's no good trying to save them now, whatever they were" (for Henderson was attempting to rake them out between the bars); "they're done for now," and he pressed down the thick ma.s.s of foolscap into the reddest centre of the fire, and held it there until nothing remained of it but a heap of flaky crimson ashes.

A dead silence followed, for the boys felt that now, at any rate, they were "in for it."

The sound of the tea-bell prevented further mischief; and as Henderson thrust his arm through Walter's, he said, "Oh, Evson, I wish you hadn't done that! I wish I'd got you to come away before. What a pa.s.sionate fellow you are!"

"Well, it's done now," said Walter, already beginning to soften, and to repent of his fatuity.

"What can we do?" said Henderson anxiously.

"Take the consequences, that's all," answered Walter.

"Hadn't you better go and tell Paton about it at once instead of letting him find it out?"

"No," said Walter; "he's done nothing but bully me, and I don't care."

"Then let me go," said his friend earnestly. "I know Paton well; I'm sure he'd be ready to forgive you, if I explained it all to him."

"You're very good, Flip; but don't go:--it's too late."

"Well, Walter, you mustn't think that I had no share in this because of being afraid. I was one of the group, and I'll share the punishment with you, whatever it is. I hope for your sake it won't be found out."

But if Henderson had seen a little deeper he would have hoped that it would be found out, for there is nothing that works quicker ruin to any character than undiscovered sin. It was happy for Walter that his wrong impulses did _not_ remain undiscovered; happy for him that they came so rapidly to be known and to be punished.

It was noised through the school in five minutes that Evson, one of the new fellows, had smashed open Paton's desk and burned the contents.

"What an awful row he'll get into!" was the general comment. Walter heard Kenrick inquiring eagerly about it as they sat at tea; but Kenrick didn't ask _him_ about it, though they sat so near each other. After the foolish, proud manner of sensitive boys, Walter and Kenrick, though each liked the other none the less, were not on speaking terms. Walter, less morbidly proud than Kenrick, would not have suffered this silly alienation to continue had not his attention been occupied by other troubles. Neither of them, therefore, liked to be the first to break the ice, and now in his most serious difficulty Walter had lost the advice and sympathy of his most intimate friend.

The fellows seemed to think that he must inevitably be expelled for this _fracas_. The poor boy's thoughts were very, very bitter as he laid his head that night on his restless pillow, remembered what an ungovernable fool he had been, and dreamt of his happy and dear-loved home. How strangely he seemed to have left his old, innocent life behind him, and how little he would have believed it possible, two months ago, that he could by any conduct of his own have so soon incurred, or nearly incurred, the penalty of expulsion from Saint Winifred's School.

He had certainly yielded very quickly to pa.s.sion, and he felt that in consequence he had made his position more serious than that of other boys who were in every sense of the word twice as bad as himself. But what he laid to the score of his ill-luck was in truth a very happy providence by which punishment was sent speedily and heavily upon him, and so his evil tendencies, mercifully nipped in the bud, crushed with a tender yet with an iron hand before they had expanded more blossoms and been fed by deeper roots. He might have been punished less speedily had his faults been more radical, or his wrong-doings of a deeper dye.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

THE BURNT Ma.n.u.sCRIPT.

All All my poor sc.r.a.pings, from a dozen years Of dust and desk-work.