But Cashel, being the stronger of the two, was as anxious to get rid of Gully as Gully was to cling to him. "No," he said; "I"m going to rough it; and you wouldn"t be able for that. You"re not strong enough for a sea life. Why, man, those sailor fellows are as hard as nails; and even they can hardly stand it."
"Well, then, do you come with me," urged Gully. "My uncle"s gamekeeper won"t mind. He"s a jolly good sort; and we shall have no end of shooting."
"That"s all very well for you, Gully; but I don"t know your uncle; and I"m not going to put myself under a compliment to his gamekeeper.
Besides, we should run too much risk of being caught if we went through the country together. Of course I should be only too glad if we could stick to one another, but it wouldn"t do; I feel certain we should be nabbed. Good-bye."
"But wait a minute," pleaded Gully. "Suppose they do try to catch us; we shall have a better chance against them if there are two of us."
"Stuff!" said Cashel. "That"s all boyish nonsense. There will be at least six policemen sent after us; and even if I did my very best, I could barely lick two if they came on together. And you would hardly be able for one. You just keep moving, and don"t go near any railway station, and you will get to Scotland all safe enough. Look here, we have wasted five minutes already. I have got my wind now, and I must be off. Good-bye."
Gully disdained to press his company on Cashel any further. "Good-bye,"
he said, mournfully shaking his hand. "Success, old chap."
"Success," echoed Cashel, grasping Gully"s hand with a pang of remorse for leaving him. "I"ll write to you as soon as I have anything to tell you. It may be some months, you know, before I get regularly settled."
He gave Gully a final squeeze, released him, and darted off along the road leading to Panley Village. Gully looked after him for a moment, and then ran away Scotlandwards.
Panley Village consisted of a High Street, with an old-fashioned inn at one end, a modern railway station and bridge at the other, and a pump and pound midway between. Cashel stood for a while in the shadow under the bridge before venturing along the broad, moonlit street. Seeing no one, he stepped out at a brisk walking pace; for he had by this time reflected that it was not possible to run all the way to the Spanish main. There was, however, another person stirring in the village besides Cashel. This was Mr. Wilson, Dr. Moncrief"s professor of mathematics, who was returning from a visit to the theatre. Mr. Wilson had an impression that theatres were wicked places, to be visited by respectable men only on rare occasions and by stealth. The only plays he went openly to witness were those of Shakespeare; and his favorite was "As You Like It"; Rosalind in tights having an attraction for him which he missed in Lady Macbeth in petticoats. On this evening he had seen Rosalind impersonated by a famous actress, who had come to a neighboring town on a starring tour. After the performance he had returned to Panley, supped there with a friend, and was now making his way back to Moncrief House, of which he had been intrusted with the key. He was in a frame of mind favorable for the capture of a runaway boy. An habitual delight in being too clever for his pupils, fostered by frequently overreaching them in mathematics, was just now stimulated by the effect of a liberal supper and the roguish consciousness of having been to the play. He saw and recognized Cashel as he approached the village pound.
Understanding the situation at once, he hid behind the pump, waited until the unsuspecting truant was pa.s.sing within arm"s-length, and then stepped out and seized him by the collar of his jacket.
"Well, sir," he said. "What are you doing here at this hour? Eh?"
Cashel, scared and white, looked up at him, and could not answer a word.
"Come along with me," said Wilson, sternly.
Cashel suffered himself to be led for some twenty yards. Then he stopped and burst into tears.
"There is no use in my going back," he said, sobbing. "I have never done any good there. I can"t go back."
"Indeed," said Wilson, with magisterial sarcasm. "We shall try to make you do better in future." And he forced the fugitive to resume his march.
Cashel, bitterly humiliated by his own tears, and exasperated by a certain cold triumph which his captor evinced on witnessing them, did not go many steps farther without protest.
"You needn"t hold me," he said, angrily; "I can walk without being held." The master tightened his grasp and pushed his captive forward.
"I won"t run away, sir," said Cashel, more humbly, shedding fresh tears.
"Please let me go," he added, in a suffocated voice, trying to turn his face toward his captor. But Wilson twisted him back again, and urged him still onward. Cashel cried out pa.s.sionately, "Let me go," and struggled to break loose.
"Come, come, Byron," said the master, controlling him with a broad, strong hand; "none of your nonsense, sir."
Then Cashel suddenly slipped out of his jacket, turned on Wilson, and struck up at him savagely with his right fist. The master received the blow just beside the point of his chin; and his eyes seemed to Cashel roll up and fall back into his head with the shock. He drooped forward for a moment, and fell in a heap face downward. Cashel recoiled, wringing his hand to relieve the tingling of his knuckles, and terrified by the thought that he had committed murder. But Wilson presently moved and dispelled that misgiving. Some of Cashel"s fury returned as he shook his fist at his prostrate adversary, and, exclaiming, "YOU won"t brag much of having seen me cry," wrenched the jacket from him with unnecessary violence, and darted away at full speed.
Mr. Wilson, though he was soon conscious and able to rise, did not feel disposed to stir for a long time. He began to moan with a dazed faith that some one would eventually come to him with sympathy and a.s.sistance.
Five minutes elapsed, and brought nothing but increased cold and pain.
It occurred to him that if the police found him they would suppose him to be drunk; also that it was his duty to go to them and give them the alarm. He rose, and, after a struggle with dizziness and nausea, concluded that his most pressing duty was to get to bed, and leave Dr.
Moncrief to recapture his ruffianly pupil as best he could.
Accordingly, at half-past one o"clock, the doctor was roused by a knocking at his chamber-door, outside which he presently found his professor of mathematics, bruised, muddy, and apparently inebriated.
Five minutes elapsed before Wilson could get his princ.i.p.al"s mind on the right track. Then the boys were awakened and the roll called. Byron and Molesworth were reported absent. No one had seen them go; no one had the least suspicion of how they got out of the house. One little boy mentioned the skylight; but observing a threatening expression on the faces of a few of the bigger boys, who were fond of fruit, he did not press his suggestion, and submitted to be snubbed by the doctor for having made it. It was nearly three o"clock before the alarm reached the village, where the authorities tacitly declined to trouble themselves about it until morning. The doctor, convinced that the lad had gone to his mother, did not believe that any search was necessary, and contented himself with writing a note to Mrs. Byron describing the attack on Mr.
Wilson, and expressing regret that no proposal having for its object the readmission of Master Byron to the academy could be entertained.
The pursuit was now directed entirely after Molesworth, an it wan plain, from Mr. Wilson"s narrative, that he had separated from Cashel outside Panley. Information was soon forthcoming. Peasants in all parts of the country had seen, they said, "a lad that might be him." The search lasted until five o"clock next afternoon, when it was rendered superfluous by the appearance of Gully in person, footsore and repentant. After parting from Cashel and walking two miles, he had lost heart and turned back. Half way to the cross roads he had reproached himself with cowardice, and resumed his flight. This time he placed eight miles betwixt himself and Moncrief House. Then he left the road to make a short cut through a plantation, and went astray. After wandering until morning, thinking dejectedly of the story of the babes in the wood, he saw a woman working in a field, and asked her the shortest way to Scotland. She had never heard of Scotland; and when he asked the way to Panley she lost patience and threatened to set her dog at him.
This discouraged him so much that he was afraid to speak to the other strangers whom he met. Having the sun as a compa.s.s, he oscillated between Scotland and Panley according to the fluctuation of his courage.
At last he yielded to hunger, fatigue, and loneliness, devoted his remaining energy to the task of getting back to school; struck the common at last, and hastened to surrender himself to the doctor, who menaced him with immediate expulsion. Gully was greatly concerned at having to leave the place he had just run away from, and earnestly begged the doctor to give him another chance. His prayer was granted.
After a prolonged lecture, the doctor, in consideration of the facts that Gully had been seduced by the example of a desperate a.s.sociate, that he had proved the sincerity of his repentance by coming back of his own accord, and had not been accessory to the concussion of the brain from which Mr. Wilson supposed himself to be suffering, accepted his promise of amendment and gave him a free pardon. It should be added that Gully kept his promise, and, being now the oldest pupil, graced his position by becoming a moderately studious, and, on one occasion, even a sensible lad.
Meanwhile Mrs. Byron, not suspecting the importance of the doctor"s note, and happening to be in a hurry when it arrived, laid it by unopened, intending to read it at her leisure. She would have forgotten it altogether but for a second note which came two days later, requesting some acknowledgment of the previous communication. On learning the truth she immediately drove to Moncrief House, and there abused the doctor as he had never been abused in his life before; after which she begged his pardon, and implored him to a.s.sist her to recover her darling boy. When he suggested that she should offer a reward for information and capture she indignantly refused to spend a farthing on the little ingrate; wept and accused herself of having driven him away by her unkindness; stormed and accused the doctor of having treated him harshly; and, finally, said that she would give one hundred pounds to have him back, but that she would never speak to him again. The doctor promised to undertake the search, and would have promised anything to get rid of his visitor. A reward of fifty pounds was offered. But whether the fear of falling into the clutches of the law for murderous a.s.sault stimulated Cashel to extraordinary precaution, or whether he had contrived to leave the country in the four days which elapsed between his flight and the offer of the reward, the doctor"s efforts were unsuccessful; and he had to confess their failure to Mrs. Byron. She agreeably surprised him by writing a pleasant letter to the effect that it was very provoking, and that she could never thank him sufficiently for all the trouble he had taken. And so the matter dropped.
Long after that generation of scholars had pa.s.sed away from Moncrief House, the name of Cashel Byron was remembered there as that of a hero who, after many fabulous exploits, had licked a master and bolted to the Spanish Main.
III
There was at this time in the city of Melbourne, in Australia, a wooden building, above the door of which was a board inscribed "GYMNASIUM AND SCHOOL OF ARMS." In the long, narrow entry hung a framed ma.n.u.script which set forth that Ned Skene, ex-champion of England and the colonies, was to be heard of within daily by gentlemen desirous of becoming proficient in the art of self-defence. Also the terms on which Mrs.
Skene, a.s.sisted by a competent staff of professors, would give lessons in dancing, deportment, and calisthenics.
One evening a man sat smoking on a common wooden chair outside the door of this establishment. On the ground beside him were some tin tacks and a hammer, with which he had just nailed to the doorpost a card on which was written in a woman"s handwriting: "WANTED A MALE ATTENDANT WHO CAN KEEP ACCOUNTS. INQUIRE WITHIN." The smoker was a powerful man, with a thick neck that swelled out beneath his broad, flat ear-lobes. He had small eyes, and large teeth, over which his lips were slightly parted in a good-humored but cunning smile. His hair was black and close-cut; his skin indurated; and the bridge of his nose smashed level with his face.
The tip, however, was uninjured. It was squab and glossy, and, by giving the whole feature an air of being on the point of expanding to its original shape, produced a snubbed expression which relieved the otherwise formidable aspect of the man, and recommended him as probably a modest and affable fellow when sober and unprovoked. He seemed about fifty years of age, and was clad in a straw hat and a suit of white linen.
He had just finished his pipe when a youth stopped to read the card on the doorpost. This youth was attired in a coa.r.s.e sailor"s jersey and a pair of gray tweed trousers, which he had considerably outgrown.
"Looking for a job?" inquired the ex-champion of England and the colonies.
The youth blushed and replied, "Yes. I should like to get something to do."
Mr. Skene stared at him with stern curiosity. His piofessional pursuits had familiarized him with the manners and speech of English gentlemen, and he immediately recognized the shabby sailor lad as one of that cla.s.s.
"Perhaps you"re a scholar," said the prize-fighter, after a moment"s reflection.
"I have been at school; but I didn"t learn much there," replied the youth. "I think I could bookkeep by double entry," he added, glancing at the card.
"Double entry! What"s that?"
"It"s the way merchants" books are kept. It is called so because everything is entered twice over."
"Ah!" said Skene, unfavorably impressed by the system; "once is enough for me. What"s your weight?"
"I don"t know," said the lad, with a grin.
"Not know your own weight!" exclaimed Skene. "That ain"t the way to get on in life."
"I haven"t been weighed since I was in England," said the other, beginning to get the better of his shyness. "I was eight stone four then; so you see I am only a light-weight."
"And what do you know about light-weights? Perhaps, being so well educated, you know how to fight. Eh?"