The boys of Axleford

11

THE

BOYS OF AXLEFORD

Frontispiece.

P. i

THE BOYS OF
AXLEFORD

BY CHARLES CAMDEN p

AUTHOR OF "WHEN i WAS YOUNG"

Q. \VeuJ c j

ILLUSTRATED BY

FKTT1E, HOUGHTON, FRASER, MAHONEY, WALKER
AND FRENCH

LONDON

GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS
BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL

NEW YORK: 416, BROOME STREET
1880

MONTHLY MAGAZINES FOR THE
HOUSEHOLD.

EVERY BOY'S MAGAZINE .
EVERY GIRL'S MAGAZINE
. . JLlTf LE, WIJDE-AWAKE ...
. • • . . . '., , «•,,..,,' J ^ ;

. 6d.
. 6d.

PZ.7

at fc>

CONTENTS.

I. FIBBING BILL I

II. SULKY SAM 1J

III. DASHING GEORGE 33

IV. SHY DICK 50

V. LAZY TOM 62

VI. FUNNY PAT 76

VII. BLUSTERING FRED . . . . '...." 94'

VIII. HONEST NED . •. ."if?

* . , J

IX. PALTRY, PETER/ ; ., . . • • .* 131

X. JOLLY JIM .'..'. . • . . 155

* •

XI. TRUANT JACK 169

XII. SCIENTIFIC STEPHEN . . . • IQ7

482991:

I.

FIBBING BILL.

AXLEFORD SCHOOL was a nice
warm-looking old place, with twisted
chimneys, and windows in all kinds of funny
places in its red walls, that were as ripe as
red apples, and in its grey roof-ridge's,' that
were like ever so many little ranges of moun-

* * • • •

tains; and it looked out over a green paddock

•

that almost bulged over a sloping mossy wall,
like a plump lady's instep over her shoe, on
to a winding country lane that led down to
the village of Axleford. I suppose the village
was called so because the little stream that ran
across the lane came up to the axles of the carts

THE BOYS OF AXLE FORD.

and waggons that forded it. There was a little
wooden bridge for foot-passengers. Elms and
chestnut trees grew along the wall of the school
paddock, and almost covered the lane with their
spreading branches. All round about the school
there were woods and meadows, corn-fields
and turnip-fields. On the side of the paddock
nearest Axleford there was a great pond, that
we could bathe in and fish in in warm weather,
and skate and slide on in cold. There was a
leaky old punt on it, too, that belonged to the
schpol-house. AncJ close by the school there

*

was a* ruined old gfey "church, with* b/ushy ivy
growing all about it, and- no end oft birds' nests
in its walls; and a big old farmyard, full of
empty barns, and . cart-lodges, and stables, and
cow-houses, and cattle-sheds, formed part of the
school premises. Most of the boys who went to
school at Axleford thought it a very jolly place.
I was there for a good many years, and am going
to tell you something about some of my school-

FIBBING BILL.

mates, good and bad. They won't mind my
telling tales out of school now. A good many
of them, perhaps, are not left to mind. I shall
call them, at starting, names that papa, and
mamma, and the girls, and the " kids " can un-
derstand, but you and I know that boys aren't
called like that at school. So I shall give their
proper nicknames too.

Fibbing Bill, for instance, we called Crammer.
He wasn't a bad sort of fellow in some things,
but then he did tell such awful lies. He was
so fond of getting into scrapes that at first you
thought him plucky, but he always tried to get
out of his scrapes by a fib of some kind, and
therefore you couldn't respect Crammer long.
There are some scrapes that it is almost natural
for you youngsters to get into (you wouldn't be
youngsters, but precocious grandpapas, if you
didn't get into them), and there are some scrapes
you have no business whatever to get into ; but,

whichever kind you do get into, don't back out

1 — 2

THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

of them by telling a lie, but take the conse-
quences like men. Though it is a good many
years since I had the cane, I can remember how
it cuts when it comes down with a whistle on the
palm and ddubles.back on the knuckles ; but it is
far better to have weals on your hands for weeks,
than to hear conscience saying, " Oh, you mean
little beggar!" when the lights are out in the
bed-room, and the chaps that liave got caned are
snoring as comfortably as pigs, because they
have no fear of being found out, after all, on the
morrow.

One of the stables in the farmyard was our
menagerie. We kept guinea-pigs and ferrets
there, and they kept away the rats. And we
kept rabbits, and a hedgehog, and a young fox,
and three squirrels, and two ravens ; pigeons and
doves, two or three magpies and starlings (whose
tongues we had split with a thin sixpence, and
yet they wouldn't talk) ; linnets and goldfinches,
and bullfinches, and canaries; blackbirds, and

FIBBING BILL. 5

thrushes, and larks ; half a dozen puppies, and
white mice, and field-mice, and dormice, and a
mole; a newt in a porter-bottle, and a bowl of
goldfish, that were always dying; and some
snakes, like whip-thongs made of different co-
loured ribbons, that were always dying too, or
else crawling away, just when we thought that
we had tamed them; and I don't know how
many newspaper-trayfuls of silkworms, and
ever so many more things that I can't remember
now.

Crammer was a rabbit-fancier. He had one
big buck that he was especially proud of — a
great, ugly, white-and-sandy fellow, as long as
a hare, and ever so much fatter. Poor Bill used
to tell crams about his rabbits, as he did about
everything else, and he said that he had given
five shillings for this old buck. He had bought
it at Dulchester, from a man of the name of
Blater, who sold rock, and brandy-balls, and
things of that kind, in a stall in the High Street

THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

on market-days, and kept a bird and rabbit-shop
in one of the back lanes.

We soon found out from Blater what Crammer
had paid for his rabbit; but that made no dif-
ference to Bill. He maintained as at first that
he had paid five shillings, and bragged that he
must understand rabbits a great deal better than
Blater did, or else he wouldn't have been able to
get such a pearl amongst bucks for so ridiculously
low a price. Crammer called his buck Pearl. The
rest of us called him Saturn, because, whenever
he got the chance, he used to eat up his little ones.
Nobody but his master could see anything in
Pearl, except his bigness; but Crammer used to
talk as if he was doing us a great favour when
he lugged the big beast out of the hutch by his
ugly, short, stiff ears (they hadn't a mite of lop
in them), and let him hobble about on the stable
floor, stopping to rest, and pant, and sit down
every half-minute, just like a pursy, gouty old
gentleman. We used to show our live stock

FIBBING BILL,

against one another's, just as, I dare say, you do
now; and so do the grown-up costermongers in
Bethnal Green, and the grown-up farmers at the
Agricultural Hall. We grown-up people do much
the same as you boys do ; only, somehow, we
can't manage to be so jolly over it.

One morning, however, when we ran into the
stable as usual as soon as we were up, one of the
fellows called out, "Look here, Bill! what's the
matter with your buck?" When Crammer did
look, lie was almost mad with rage, for Pearl
was lying on his side, with his legs out and body
swelled up like a bladder, quite dead. Poor
Crammer could hardly help crying. We were
very sorry for him at first, though we didn't think
much of his rabbit. We were looking at the bits
of stalks left in the hutch to see what the buck
had been eating to poison him, when Crammer
began to accuse us of killing it out of jealousy
and spite. Then he began to blubber. Of course
we couldn't help pitying him a bit, but we were

8 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

very angry that he should dare to accuse us of
such a mean thing as that. It was just his ac-
cusing us this way that made us suspect him
afterwards, when another rabbit died.

A little time after this, one of the chaps bought
a real beauty of Blater. It was a white and black
buck — as white as ermine and as glossy black as
jet — and it had a regular butterfly smut. You
might have fancied that a black butterfly had
lighted on its nose. It had regular lop-ears, too
— not oar-lop, or single lop — but both hung down
like a King Charles's spaniel's ears. Even Cram-
mer admitted at first that it was pretty good, and
tried to buy it. When he couldn't get it, he made
out that it wasn't worth much ; but it was easy
to see that he was .quite savage because it wasn't
his. It was such a very handsome buck that we
called it Paris. Well, one evening we had been
rung into school to write our exercises. Crammer
sat next to me, and he came in rather late, and
I noticed that he looked very queer, and got his

FIBBING BILL.

exercise-book and his dictionary out of his loqker
in a great hurry, and began to scribble away a
good deal faster than he generally did. Presently,
one of the little fellows found that he had left a
book in the stable, and asked leave to go and
fetch it. He came back quite pale, and as soon
as he got inside the door he called out to the
usher,

" Please, sir, one of the ferrets has got out, and
is sucking Smith's buck."

Smith didn't wait to ask leave, but jumped
over the form, and rushed off to the stable. He
soon came back, carrying poor Paris dead in his
arms. Everybody looked up except Crammer.
He went on as if he did not know anything had
happened.

The usher began to make inquiries.

" I choked the little brute off," said Smith,
" but it was too late. It was my ferret, and how
it could get out I don't know. I 'm certain the
cage could only be opened from the outside — so

io THE BOYS OF AXLE FORD.

the ferret must have got out first, before it could
let itself out"

We couldn't help laughing at that — Smith
was always making speeches of that sort ; but
we were very sorry for him all the same ; and
I couldn't help believing that Crammer knew
something about the matter. By-and-bye, as if
he had just found out what all the disturbance
was about, he looked up and said,

" Oh, yes, ferrets often get out of their cages ;
Blater's do — he told me so — only he keeps his
with their mouths sewn up."

" How can he feed them ?" asked Smith.

" Well, / don't know anything about your
rabbit," answered Crammer ; " I haven't been in
the stable since dinner-time."

"Who said you had ?" said Smith; and \ve
all looked at Crammer very suspiciously.

The usher noticed that his pocket-handkerchief
was twisted round one of his fingers, and asked
him what was the matter with it.

FIBBING BILL. it

" I Ve cut it, sir."

"What with?"

•' With a knife."

" Please, sir, I picked up this knife just under
Smith's ferret-cage," said the little boy who had
been in the stable.

Crammer looked very scared when the usher
said, " Why, this is your knife, Bunting : here is
your name on the handle ;" but a moment after
he cried out, as if he had made a great discovery,

" Then Francis Minor must have let the ferret
out, sir. I haven't had that knife for a fortnight,
and I always thought he prigged it. Don't you
see, sir, the little blade 's broken ? He must have
done that when he was untwisting the wires."

We were almost certain now that it was Cram-
mer that had got the ferret out and put him into
the rabbit-hutch, and we were quite certain when
the usher made him take the handkerchief off
his finger, and we saw that the wound in it was
far more like a bite than a knife-cut. But Cram-

12 THE BOYS OF AXLE FORD.

mer still declared that he knew nothing about
the ferret. He didn't stammer or turn red : as
often as not those are signs that a fellow is inno-
cent. He prated away like a Cheap Jack, and
we did not believe one word he said. We were
specially angry that he should be mean enough
to throw the blame on poor little Francis Minor.

Of course it is just possible that Crammer
didn't put Smith's ferret into Smith's hutch, but
I don't think that we did wrong in sending him
to Coventry for the rest of the half; and that
and his conscience together (if he was guilty, as
I am sure he was) must have been worse than a
dozen canings.

When Bill came back next half, I do believe
that he tried sometimes to keep from fibbing ;
but I Ve known him tell a fib, out of habit, when
there was nothing to be gained by it ; and if he
had thought a moment, he must have been sure
no one could believe him. If a fellow is left-
handed, you know, it 's a precious long time

FIBBING BILL, 13

before he can learn to bowl with his right, and
when he has partly got into the way of it, he is
apt every now and then to take the ball in his
left Well, it 's much the same when you have
let yourself grow left-handed in your talk. But
at last Bill got a scare that did him good.

It was just before the Christmas holidays.
The fields were all covered with snow, and Bill
and some other fellows were out in one of them,
rolling over a great dumpling that they meant to
carve into a snow-man when it was big enough.
It grew so heavy at last that they had to call
for help to turn it over. One of the chaps who
ran up was a little fellow we used to call Miss
Jemima for a joke, because he had long curls
like a girl, and his collars had borders that the
laundry-woman was obliged to Italian-iron ; but
that was his mamma's fault, and not his ; and
Miss Jemima, though we did call him so, was a
plucky fellow enough.

When the new-comers put their backs and

14 THE BO YS OF AXLEFORD.

their shoulders to the ball, it soon began to
roll over again, until it came to the brink of a
deep frozen ditch with pollards on the banks ;
some of them looked like worn-out brooms, and
some, that had snow on the top, like great drum-
sticks. There the other fellows got tired, and left
Crammer and Miss Jemima to make the snow-
man. Miss Jemima, as we found out afterwards,
scrambled up to the top of the ball, and Crammer,
for a lark, gave it a jog. It was just on the ledge
of the ditch, and over it went crash through the
ice ! It blocked up the great hole.it made, and
when Crammer couldn't see anything of Miss
Jemima, he thought that the little fellow must
be drowning down below in the cold black water.
He was in an awful fright, and ran back to the
school shouting out for help. Plenty of help
rushed back with him to the ditch, but even then
he couldn't tell the truth. He said that the little
fellow had scooped away the snow on the other
side of the ball to make it tumble into the ditch,

FIBBING BILL.

and that whilst he was doing so the ball had
fallen in, taking him down with it The masters,
and the boys, and the servants broke up the ice
in the ditch, and prodded everywhere with poles,
but they couldn't find poor Miss Jemima. At
last we thought that his body must have been
carried down into the pond, but how it could
have got there so soon (though the ditch was
more like a rivulet than a common ditch) was a
mystery. Anyhow, we made sure that we should
never see Miss Jemima alive again. The Doctoi
sent into Dulchester for drags, and employed
every man he could lay hands on to break up
the pond ; but nothing had been seen of the
little fellow when at last we were rung into the
school-room to late evening prayers. When the
prayers were half over, in tottered Miss Jemima,
as pale as a ghost, and with a streak and smear
of clotted blood upon his forehead ; and up from
his knees jumped Crammer, crying, "Oh! don't
hurt me ! I didn't mean to do it."

16 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

If Crammer had not told a lie about the way
in which the accident happened, Miss Jemima
would have been looked for on the other side of
the ditch as well as in it ; and there he would
have been found lying-, stunned and bleeding,
behind a ploughshare, against which he had been
hurled. As things were, Miss Jemima had to
spend his Christmas holidays at Axleford, raving
in fever ; and when we came back, his mamma
was still with him, and the poor little chap was
as thin and as weak as a starved mouse. Cram-
mer came back with us, though the Doctor had
vowe ^ he would expel him. But Miss Jemima's
mamma, though she did still have his collars
Italian-ironed (he had no long curls left), had
kindly asked the Doctor to give Bill another
chance, because her little boy had asked her to
do so ; and before he left Axleford, new boys
couldn't make out why Bill Bunting was still
called Crammer. Names will stick, you know,
long after they have ceased to be deserved.

II.

SULKY SAM.

THE first time I saw Bear's Cub — that was
our nickname for sulky Sam Thompson —
was the first time I ever went into the school-room
at Axleford. He was a little chap then — not
much bigger than I was — and he had only been
at school a few hours longer than I had been ;
but his school godfathers and godmothers (for
the needlewoman and the servants thought him
as grumpy as the fellows did) had already given
him that name. He looked as if he deserved it.
Some of the chaps wanted him to come out and
play, instead of moping over his locker ; but he
wouldn't say a word to them, and, when at last
they pulled the form from under him, he still

t8 THE BOYS OF AXLLkURD.

clung to the desk, without saying a word, but
looking just as sulky as a young bear. It wasn't
as if he was sorry at leaving home. It 's natural
enough for a little fellow to feel a bit down-
hearted the first time he goes to a large school,
and sees nothing but strange places and strange
faces about him. But Bear's Cub wasn't like
that. He wouldn't go out, just because the other
fellows wanted him to go out. Well, just the kind
of fellow he was then, I am sorry to say he con-
tinued to be all the time I knew him — or rather
he grew worse, for nothing grows on any one like
sulkiness, if you let it grow, instead of trying to
shake yourself out of it. Of course, whilst he was
a little fellow, his sulks got him plenty of teasing
and drubbings too ; but when he was too big to
have forms pulled from under him, or his back
" warmed " with a knotted pocket-handkerchief,
he wasn't a bit more respected. We called him
Old Bear's Cub, instead of Young Bear's Cub —
that was the only difference.

P. 18

SULKY SAM. 19

I will tell you how he behaved one holiday,
when he was still Young Bear's Cub.

In most of the story-books about schoolmasters
that I have read, they are made out to be great
beasts. I don't think that is quite fair. If school-
masters wrote story-books, perhaps they would
have more reason to make out that all school-
boys are plaguesome little beasts ; though that
wouldn't be fair either. Both schoolboys and
schoolmasters have good as well as bad amongst
them. Our Doctor was one of the good ones.
" Doctor " sounds as if a man must be grey and
grim, but our Doctor was not old, and he was
quite a jolly fellow. He seemed to like play
just as well as we did — cricket, and football,
and hockey on the ice, and chevy, and hare-and-
hounds, and stag-warning. Of course he wasn't
a " dunce at syntax," but he was a " dab at taw."
He would even play at leap-frog, and set low
backs for the little fellows. He was a capital
rider, and could row, and swim, and skate, and

20 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

shoot, and knew ever so much besides Latin
and Greek and mathematics — about birds, and
weasels, and fire balloons, and things like that :
so we thought a great deal of the Doctor. But,
perhaps, what made us like him most was because
he seemed almost as fidgety as we were at having
to stay in school on very fine days. Every now
and then, after we had been rung in, he would
give us a sudden holiday in fine weather, and
take us for a scamper across country.

Well, one glorious spring morning we had
been rung in, and my class was pretending to
be very busy over Omnis Gallia est divisa (we
had just begun Caesar) ; but with the sun shining
in as it did on the hacked old desk, making it
quite hot, we found it very hard to take any in-
terest in Omnis Gallia. Gaul might have been
divided into fifty thousand parts for anything
we cared. We rather wished, indeed, that it had
been broken up into so many little bits that they
could not have been picked up to bother us.

SULKY SAM.

21

Instead of looking out words in our dictionaries,
we took to drawing pictures in them. There
were so many names cut on the desk, and so
much ink had been splashed over it, and so
many faces and figures had been drawn there
already, that there was not room for any more ;
so we drew our designs on the fly-leaves of our
dictionaries — etchings something like this —

(mind, young gentlemen, I am not holding them
up in any way as models.} And then we looked
out of window, and the willow- warblers were

22 THE BOYS OF AXLE FORD.

having such a spree about the elms on the other
side of the paddock, that it really seemed as if
they were doing it to show off and plague us,
because we were kept in, whilst they were so
jolly. The little fellows in their brown dress-
coats and white waistcoats were behaving as if
the sunshine had got into their heads. They
chased one another round the tops of the trees,
and jumped up from swaying twigs like Clowns
from springing-boards. They seemed to have so
much life in them that they didn't know how to
live fast enough. They were a tantalizing sight
for little schoolboys expected to get up the first
chapter of Caesar. Just, however, as we were
settling down to Omnis Gallia in earnest (fear-
ing that, if we didn't, we shouldn't get out all
day), in came the Doctor, with a "put-away-
your-books " look on his face.

"Well, boys," he said, "we Ve had rather dis-
agreeable weather lately " — he always made some
excuse like that — " and, perhaps, a little fresh air

SULKY SAM. 23

won't do any of us any harm. So we '11 put off
business till the afternoon. Put away your books,
and we '11 start for D'Arcy Tower."

In a second the lockers had gobbled up all the
books, not to come out again until evening school
— we soon learnt what the Doctor's " afternoon "
meant — and out we tumbled round him like
.hounds round a huntsman. He generally was the
only master who went with us on these holiday
scampers. The under-masters could go or stay
as they liked ; and almost always they " elected,"
as the Yankees say, to stay.

I was in the same class with Bear's Cub then,
and we ran out of school together. Bear's Cub, for
a wonder, was in a good temper, and — a greater
wonder still — he kept in a good temper until we
had almost got out of Axleford. A bear with
a sore head, though, might have been good-
tempered that morning. When we tramped over
the little bridge at Axleford (making as great a
clatter as we could on the loose old planks), the

24 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

willows were all hung with yellow catkins, and
little fish were leaping up from the water as if
they had been just let out from school like us,
and the little sedge-warblers were chattering like
a parcel of girls, and playing hide-and-seek in
the rushes, and swinging on the reeds with their
heads down, like little acrobats. The people in
the village looked as if they would like a holiday
too. Mrs. Smith, who sold sugar and soap, and
tea and tin pots, and mops and mousetraps, and
brooms and blacking-brushes, and grindstones
and gunpowder, and lanterns and lucifer-matches
and lollipops, was standing at her shop door,
smoothing out her apron, and she gave us a grin
as we went by. The blacksmith and his man
stopped hammering as we passed the forge, and
leaned their chins on their hammer-handles to
get a good stare at us ; and the parson's groom,
who had brought down his master's horse to be
shod, touched his hat to the Doctor, and then
said to the blacksmith,

SULKY SAM.

" What a sight o* 'olidays them young gents
gits!"

" I hopes their parents likes it," growled the
surly old blacksmith.

But what did we care what he said ? We only
told Bear's Cub to make a bow to his uncle.
He generally turned doubly sulky when we told
him that the old blacksmith must be his uncle ;
but, as I have said, he was in a wonderful good
temper that morning. The wheelwright was a
nice old fellow : he let us use his tools some-
times, and helped us to shape our ships. He
was standing in front of his cottage — on the
little green littered with white chips and yellow
shavings — painting a waggon blue and red. One
of the fellows gave Bear's Cub a shove up against
it. He should not have done so, of course ; but,
after all, Bear's Cub only got a little paint on
his face and hands — so it was not worth while
making a to-do about. But Sam turned sulky at
once, and when old Chips said that lie had more

26 THE BOYS OF AXLE FORD.

reason to look black, and the fellow that had
shoved him said, for a joke (schoolboys' jokes,
you know, are not always very brilliant), that
Sam looked blue, Bear's Cub marched off by
himself, and wouldn't have another word to say
to us. It didn't hurt us, but it couldn't have been
very pleasant for him. That is the mistake sulky
folks make. Nobody cares for their sulks — they
are only punishing themselves.

Every now and then we had a cut across the
fields, but Bear's Cub trudged on by the road,
walking through all the puddles — as \tthat would
serve us out ! Such a jolly scamper we had.
Perhaps we didn't think much then about the
beauty of the thing* all around us, but they are
beautiful to remember now. The bees were out,
and a white butterfly or two, and white long-
legged lambs were butting at their mothers in
grass that you seemed to hear growing, sprinkled
all over with buttercups and daisies. There were
primroses on the hedge-banks and in the damp

SULKY SAM.

cracks of the mossy rotten old stiles and gate-
posts. The blackthorns were in blossom in the
hedges, and the plum trees and cherry trees in
the orchards ; and golden daffodils were nodding
in the cottage gardens, and great patches in the
woods were as blue as the sky with wild hyacinths.
The chaffinches were singing in the orchards, and
pruning their striped wings and their red breasts
with their blue bills. Every now and then we
heard the cuckoo ; and the skylarks, ever so high
up, were singing as if they would break a blood-
vessel. But what we cared most for then was the
birds' nests ; and we found a titmouse's. School-
boys do not think much of a tell-tale-tit, but
they think a good deal of a long-tailed tit, and
we were very proud of our find. I think, however,
that it served us right to get our hands scratched
as we did in pulling the nest out of the bush.
The titmice must have had so much trouble in
bringing all that moss and wool and cobweb to-
gether, putting such a neat arched roof upon

28 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

their home, making such a funny little doorway
in its side, whitewashing it with lichen, and fur-
nishing it with a soft feather bed.

But of course we didn't think like that then.
We exulted over our spoil, and thought Bear's
Cub (if we thought of him at all) a moping muff
to be trudging along the road all by himself,
when he might have been present at such a
capture. And so I still think he was. Well, at
last we got to D'Arcy Tower — all that is left of
D'Arcy Hall. At least the other parts are turned
into stables and barns, and cow-houses and cart-
lodges. The low farmhouse built on to the Tower
is pretty old, but it is not nearly so old as the
Tower, and yet it looks as if it wouldn't last half
so long. There are eight storeys in the brick
Tower, and you go up it by a winding staircase
lighted with little pointed windows ; and sparrows
and jackdaws and starlings build in the ivy that
almost covers up the little windows, and from the
top you can see for miles round — meadows and

SULKY SAM. 29

fields, and woods and marshes, farmhouses and
churches, and rivers and the sea with ships on it.
The Tower was a jolly place to climb about, and,
besides the other birds, two great owls lived in
the dark cobwebby room half-way up ; and once
one of the big fellows got a little owl out of their
nest, though it was dangerous work, for the floor
was as rotten as thawing ice in some places, and
the owls flew at him, and tried to peck his eyes
out.

D'Arcy Tower, however, was a long way from
Axleford, and we were very hungry, as well as
rather tired, when we got there. So the Doctor
went into the farmhouse to have a talk with the
farmer, and presently we were called into a long
broad low kitchen, with a brick floor, and a wood
fire on the hearth, and we sat down on any seats
that we could find, and lunched off home-made
bread, and a cheese almost as big as a cart-wheel :
the little fellows had new milk, and the big fel-
lows home-brewed ale.

30 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

Whilst we were enjoying ourselves, Bear's Cub
limped up and peeped in ; but instead of coming
in to get some grub himself, the stupid turned
away, and went and sat down on the wall of the
well. There he sat moping whilst we finished
our lunch, and there he sat moping whilst we
swarmed like ants over the Tower and the farm
buildings.

"Yer may git as many sparrers' nists as ye
likes, young gen'lemen," said the farmer; "the
little warmin!"

(He meant the sparrows, not us.)

There were long wreaths of blown sparrows'
eggs dangling and crossing in the farm kitchen,
and the farmer belonged to a club that paid so
much a dozen for sparrows' heads. He had lived
amongst birds all his life, and yet he did not know
what good the sparrows did his garden, and his
orchard, and his farm-crops. If he had known,
he would have called us "little warmin," when
he saw us pulling out the hay the little brown-

SULKY SAM. 31

coats had twisted into homes. Perhaps the
Doctor would have stopped us if he had seen
us; but he was telling some of the big fellows
the history of the Tower, showing them that the
barn had once been the banqueting-chamber of
the old Hall, and a root-house, with a great fire-
place in each corner, the kitchen; and pointing
out that the facings and the ornamental copings
were not stone, but moulded brick-earth — stone
being scarce in that clayey country. Some of
the smacks that we could just see from the top
of the Tower, he said, were dredging for stone.
A few of us little chaps liked to hear about all
that ; but most of us, I suppose, were a great
deal more interested in the birds' nests.

If we were doing mischief, however, we didn't
know it ; and I don't think that Bear's Cub was
any better employed, sitting sulking on the wall
of the well. The good-natured farmer's wife
brought him out a great hunk of bread and
cheese, but he wouldn't eat it; and when she

32 THE BOYS OF AXLE FORD.

asked him why he didn't go with the rest, he
said that we were "a set of beasts ;" so she left
him to sit and sulk.

There he sat sulking when we tramped away
from the farm. When the last of us turned the
corner of the long, high-hedged chase, we could
just see him crawling out of the gate of the straw-
yard like a sulky snail.

It came on to rain before we got home, and
we had to go at the double; but Bear's Cub
wouldn't hurry. He came back drenched, and
was laid up with a bad cold ; but he didn't get
much pity from anybody, because he had brought
it 01 himself by his sulkiness.

III.

DASHING GEORGE.

ONE of the nicest fellows at Axleford was
dashing George Rippingale. I was not
at school long with him, because he was ever so
much older than I ; but long after he had left
school we used to talk about him. He was a
tall, dark, handsome, clever, plucky fellow, and
so we were proud of him. But we were very
fond of him too — especially the youngsters. He
wouldn't let us be put upon if he could help
it ; and he was a very generous chap too, and he
used to show us how to do our exercises, and
things like that. When he had left school, and
any of the big fellows was afraid to do anything,

34 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

we used to say, " Ah ! Rippingale would have
done it;" and we little fellows who had been at
school with him used to cock over the little fel-
lows who hadn't, as if knowing him somehow
made us finer fellows ourselves. He went to
Addiscombe when he left school, and he was
killed at Aliwal. Poor old Rip ! I could tell you
dozens of dashing things he did, but I have only
room for two stories.

On the road to Dulchester there was a farm
called Little Rowlands, and such a queer old
farmer lived there. All the time I was at school
he wore the same clothes, week-days and Sun-
days ; hat, and boots, and everything looked as
if they had been taken off a scarecrow. Indeed,
some of the scarecrows about Axleford were
better dressed than old Lufkin. And yet he
was one of the richest men in all Calfingham-
shire. He touched his dusty broad-brimmed hat
to the banker when he met him in Dulchester
High Street on market-days; but when old

DASHING GEORGE. 35

Lufkin went into the bank, the banker used to
ask him into the bank parlour; and when he left,
the banker used to come out to the front door
with him, and stand talking with him on the
steps. Besides the heaps of money he had in
the bank, it was said that old Lufkin kept a lot
at home, hidden in all kinds of queer places,
for fear the bank should break. I don't know
whether this was true ; but, at any rate, he never
asked any one to his house, and he tried to keep
every one except his men off his farm. He
kept three or four fierce dogs, and he always had
a great surly beast of a bull. He was obliged to
kill one or two, because they gored I don't know
how many people ; but when he got rid of one
big brute, he always bought a bigger. The one
I am going to tell you about was the biggest
and surliest of them all — a great brindled brute,
with frizzled brown curls, that looked as if they
had been singed, between his sharp horns, and
eyes like hot coals. His bellow was very much

3 — 2

36 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

like a lion's roar, and he lashed his sides with
his tufted tail just like a lion. When old Bel-
zebull — that was the name we gave the beast —
was in any of the meadows near the road, and
looked over the hedge, or the stile, or the gate at
us — blowing out his breath as if he was smoking
through his nose — we little chaps used to feel
funky. We should have been afraid to go into the
same field with, him, as Rippingale did, though
we were all head-over-ears in love with the pretty
little girl whom Rippingale went to save. She
was the Doctor's niece, and had just come on a
visit to the school-house. She had gone out for
a walk by herself, and climbed over into one of
old Lufkin's pastures to gather the white lace-
like hemlock that was growing in the ditches.
Belzebull was in the next meadow, and when he
saw her red cloak in the middle of the milky
blossoms, he gave a growl and made a rush at her
(the gate of his meadow was open). Rippingale
was coming back from Dulchester, and heard her

DASHING GEORGE. 37

scream. When he looked over the stile, pretty
little Annie Scott was running away on the far-
ther side of the pasture, with the bull after her.
In a second Rippingale had vaulted over the
stile, and in half a minute more he had pulled
up a hedge-stake, and was tearing across the pas-
ture. He only got across it just in time. Annie
was standing with her back against a tree, and
the bull had shut his eyes to make his run at her.
Just as the bull dashed in, Rippingale dashed in
too, gave him a tremendous clout across the nose
with his stick, caught up Annie in his other arm,
and got as far off with her as he could before the
bull had time to turn. Belzebull was in a tre-
mendous rage when he found he had missed his
aim and only furrowed up the bark. He stamped
with his fore-feet and bellowed, and drew back
as if he meant to give the tree another charge ;
but in a second he was after Rippingale and
Annie. Rippingale had to turn then, and back
and dodge as if he was playing at chevy, and go

38 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

through the broadside exercise with his big stick.
At last, however, he managed to reach the stile,
and drop Annie over it into the road ; but, as he
turned to do so, the bull got at him, and tossed
him up into the trees. Fortunately he was stand-
ing sideways, and so the bull only caught him be-
tween the horns. But when he came down again
he fell flat, face downwards ; and the second time
Belzebull played battledore and shuttlecock with
him, one of the sharp horns would have run right
through Rippingale's ribs, if it had not happened
to strike against his knife in his waistcoat-pocket.
This time, however, Rippingale managed to catch
hold of the branches ; and then he crawled along
them, and dropped down alongside poor scared
little Annie from the ends of the other branches
that overhung the road. Just didn't we young-
sters wish that we had been able to do dashing
things like that, when we saw how fond she was
of Rip ?

And now for my other story : —

DASHING GEORGE. 39

The leaky old punt in the school-pond was not
the only boat we could get. The Axleford miller
kept three or four, which we used to hire some-
times on holidays. His was a water-mill, about
a quarter of a mile from the village. Well, one
Saturday after dinner, Rippingale said, "Now,
then, youngsters, who wants a row ? I '11 stand the
boat, and you must pull me, you know. Quis ?"
Lots of us shouted "Ego!" and I was one of the
six he picked out. It was a very hot afternoon,
and when we got down to it, the dusty, mossy old
mill looked as if it would nod itself into the river
if it did not take care. " The-bigger-rogue-the-
better-luck, the bigger-rogue-the-better-luck," it
was muttering drowsily, just as if it was talking
in its sleep. The miller and his man were both
snoring, with their legs spread out on the floury
floor, and their backs resting against fat sacks,
and you couldn't help fancying that if they didn't
soon wake, the stones would think they had a
right to have a rest too, and the white meal

40 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

would stop running out of the brown spouts.
The miller's wife let us into the little garden
that led down to the rotten steps, where the
boats were poking their heads together, as if they
were whispering secrets.

" You 'd better not go fur this afternoon,
Master Jarge," she said to Rippingale. " There 's
thunder in the air."

He was a favourite with the miller's wife, just
as he was with almost everybody else. He chose
a four-oared boat, and off we went — in a splash-
ing spurt at first.

"Talk about cuttersmen!" we said, and we
caught crabs, and one of the tholes broke, and a
fellow tumbled back with his legs up in the air.
But that kind of thing, and laughing at it, was
too hot work to keep up long. There was a tiny
breeze now and then on the river, though even
the quaker-grass scarcely moved in the meadows,
and the wet weeds smelt cool, and the willow-
leaves looked cool as they dipped into the water;

DASHING GEORGE.

but everything else was awfully hot. Everything
was very still too. When a fish leapt, it made
you jump. It was not long before we could see
the thunder-clouds working up from the sea, but
Rippingale thought that the storm would not
break for a good while ; and so on and on we
went — a good deal farther than we thought we
were going, though we did only "spoon the
batter." The river was a very little one — so
narrow in some places that the oars had nothing
but reeds and rushes to dip into, and sometimes
we had to unship them to keep them from striking
against the banks ; and so shallow in some places
that we had to take off our shoes and stockings,
and tuck up our trousers, and push the boat over
the shoals. The water felt so refreshing that
Rippingale proposed a bathe. We did not think
anything of the storm whilst we were splashing
about in the water, and chasing one another
naked, like savages, along the banks ; but when
we were putting on our clothes, darkness suddenly

42 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

seemed dropped into the air like ink into water :
not a leaf moved, and we seemed to be breathing
out of a lime-kiln. Then there came a little puff
of wind, and then the sky was cracked right down
to the ground with a broad jagged flash of blue
and pink lightning, and then the thunder thumped
and rattled and rumbled as if the heavens had
given way and all the stars were tumbling in ;
and then down came the rain in one thick square
mass that drenched us to the skin and half filled
the boat before we had time even to look for
shelter. Some of us felt scared, but Rippingale
said,

" Keep your pluck up. It was my fault ;
but there 's no great harm done. We won't go
under the trees — the Doctor says they attract
the lightning. Keep close together behind me,
and we '11 creep under the hedges to that farm-
house yonder."

So after him we trotted. Sometimes we kept
under the hedges, and sometimes we made a cut

DASHING GEORGE. 43

across a narrow field. The rain made some of it
rather heavy country ; but when we got blown,
Rippingale would take us in tow, or give us a
ride pick-a-back. The rain ceased when we got
within about a mile of the farm, but the light-
ning still flashed and the thunder still rolled.
Presently there came a flash that made us put
our hands up to our eyes, and directly after it
a clap that seemed to shake the ground.

" I 'm sure that was a thunderbolt," said Rip-
pingale, whilst the clap was changing into a sullen
growl. " I wonder what 's struck ? "

When we looked up, smoke was rolling up
from the thatch of the big barn at the farm.

"Come along, boys !" shouted Rippingale, and
off he started at a gallop. By the time we got
to the farm the barn was in a blaze, and the fire
was spreading to the other farm-buildings and
the ricks, and making spiteful licks at the roof
of the farmhouse.

" Now then, boys, do something or other — pull

44 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

out those pigs, if you can't do anything else,"
said Rippingale.

According we pulled down tarry planks and
prickly furze, and lugged out squealing pigs
by the legs, and the ears, and the tail, fancy-
ing ourselves little heroes, though there was
not the, slightest danger now, as the storm was
over. Danger for us youngsters, that is : Rippin-
gale ran into plenty of danger, and behaved like
a real hero. The farmer and his men, and people
from the neighbouring farms and the nearest
village, and two rural policemen, were rushing
about knocking their heads together as if that
by itself would do any good. A boy had gone
off at full gallop for the engine, and till that
came the bewildered people seemed to think
they could most profitably employ their time in
getting in one another's way. The farmer's wife
and her servants were pitching basins and look-
ing-glasses out of bed-room windows. One man,
more sensible than the rest, was trying to get

DASHING GEORGE. 45

the horses out of the stable ; but they would not
face the fire in the yard, and laid down their
ears, and lashed out with their heels, and bit,
and literally screamed in frantic fear.

"You should blindfold them," cried Rippingale;
and he ran into the stable, not caring a fig for their
bare yellow teeth and heavy hoofs, and slipped
corn-sacks over their heads, and then he and the
man led them out in pairs. As the last pair
clumped out of the stable, its thatch caught.
Meantime buckets had been got out, but the
people didn't seem to know what to do with
them.

" Why, make a chain down to the horse-pond
there," cried Rippingale ; and he hustled the
sleepy men, and women, and children, and us
youngsters, about until he had got two lines, one
to send up the full buckets, and the other to pass
back the empties. When the other farmers' men
who were not in the bucket chain had got some
one to tell them what to do, they were brave

46 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

enough in climbing up to all kinds of dangerous
places to pitch the water from, but Rippingale
was just as brave with his bucket. The buckets,
though, couldn't do much good without an engine,
however bravely the water was pitched out of
them. The fire was fiercer than ever, when up
rattled the little red County Insurance engine be-
hind four horses, almost swinging over, although
it was heavily ballasted with sitting and standing
smock-frocks. Beside the engine a police inspec-
tor was galloping as if for a wager.

" Who 's that ? " he said, as he jumped off his
horse. " He 's a cool young customer."

We youngsters, who overheard him, felt very
proud that, busy as he was, the great man
should have had his attention attracted to our
dashing George. Rippingale was then walk-
ing along a black blistered beam toe and heel,
as calmly as if he was only measuring a hop-
skip-and-jump, to get a good place to pitch his
bucketful from. When the engine was got to

DASHING GEORGE. 47

work, Rippingale sometimes pumped away at
that, and sometimes he helped in sending up the
full buckets (he made us keep on the " empties "
side).

The fire was got under in the yard at last,
but by that time the house had caught. It had
caught and been put out ever so many times, but
now it flared up like a great bonfire. The roof
was thatch, and there was almost as much timber
as brick in the walls. Only one window in the
upper storey was free from flames, and out of that
there came a horrid shriek. The farmer's wife
shrieked as horribly when she heard it.

" It 's little Peter!" she howled. " Ye towd me,
Jane, you took him down to the cottage hours
ago."

Little Peter was the farmer's wife's lame sickly
little boy. He was asleep in his cot when the
fire broke out, and had been left to sleep. As
soon as the house was seriously threatened, the
flustered mistress had bidden her flustered maid

48 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

carry him out of harm's way; but the fire had
made her lose her head, and she had forgotten
to see that Jane did as she was bid. Now the
poor woman could do nothing but shriek, and
wring her hands, and make mad rushes at the
house. If she had not been held back, she would
have dashed up the blazing staircase. The farmer
was on the other side of the house, and the other
men looked scared when they saw the flames
rushing up in two broad twisted horns, close to
the window of the room in which poor lame
little Peter was shrieking.

But Rippingale was not scared. There was a
plank in front of the house, and he put it up
against the window, and ran up it like a rope-
dancer, and smashed in the leaden lattice with
its diamond panes, when he could not squeeze
through the open part out of which little Peter's
screams kept coming. The plank tumbled just
as he got in, and for a minute the flames joined
across the window. We thought we should never

DASHING GEORGE. 49

see our dashing George again ; but out through
the smoke came something with a flop, and Rip
• was lying on his back in the courtyard, as black
as a collier, and with one arm broken, but not
hurt otherwise ; and little Peter was lying on him,
panting for breath, but with only his night-gown
singed. Oh, what a fuss everybody made with
Rippingale, though the house was still burning !
The inspector put down Rip's name in his report
of the fire, as the one who had " rendered the
most efficient assistance," and Rippingale had
a long paragraph all to himself in the Calfing-
ham Standard, headed " Juvenile Gallantry," and
ending, "We understand that this noble young
gentleman is to enter the Indian service. We
predict for him a Wellingtonian career."

Poor Rip did not live long enough to be made
a duke ; but the farmer and his wife were very
much disappointed and disgusted to learn that he
had not been made, at the very least, a colonel
the day after he left Axleford.

4

IV.

SHY DICK.

THERE are three birds that ought not to
be put into an aviary : the blackbird, and
the robin, and the wren; the blackbird is too
fond of cocking over little birds, and the robin is
too fond of fighting, and the poor little wren is
too timid ever to be comfortable in a crowd.
Well, a school is a kind of aviary, and I have
sometimes thought that it would be a much nicer
kind of aviary if you could keep out of it the
bullies who are like the blackbirds, and the boys
who are always picking quarrels, and wanting to
" have it out," like the robins, and the poor little
scared chaps like the wrens. But, after all, all

SHY DICK. 51

kinds of people must rub shoulders with all kinds
of people when they grow up, and, therefore,
perhaps it is just as well that they should have
to begin to rub shoulders when they are young.
The bullies get taken down ; the fighting boys
often find more than their match; the scared
little coddled boys, fresh from the nursemaid's
kisses, have their babyish peevishness shamed
out of them, and learn to pluck up a manlier
spirit of their own.

" Miss Jemima " — the little fellow I have told
you about, with the long curls and the Italian-
ironed collars — was one of the wrens when he
first came to Axleford, but he had quite grown
out of his wrennishness before the end of his
second half, as perhaps you will remember. And
yet he was always a gentler fellow in his ways
than most of us. Some fellows turn from timid
wrens into bullying blackbirds, but Shy Dick was
not like that. He was always a plucky fellow

at bottom, and really plucky fellows never are

4 — 2

52 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

bullies. He was simply shy when he first came
to school, because, I suppose, he was born shy,
like the wrens (he used to blush all over his face
and neck, like a girl — right up to the top of his
ears), and because he had never had any boys to
play with until he came to Axleford.

But we used to make cruel fun of poor little
Dick when he first came. We used to put his
hair in paper, and promise to buy him a smelling-
bottle on his birthday ; and make him blush like
a peony by telling him not to blush ; and a great
deal of brilliant wit of that kind. His first half,
and part of his second, must have been hard
times for poor little Dick. If a boy is shy, he
does not like to be thought spoony ; and that is
what we thought Miss Jemima, as you may guess
from the name we gave him.

It was in the autumn of his first year at school
that Shy Dick first came out — showed us that
he wasn't a Miss Jemima. There was a fellow at
Axleford of the name of Close ; Titus was his

SHY DICK. 53

other name, but he ought rather to have been
called Caligula, or something of that kind. He
was a big fellow, and, by taking care not to fight
with fellows that could have licked him, he had
got the reputation, somehow, of being a terrible
fellow if he did choose to fight. Not that all of
us believed in him. If he had been better tem-
pered, perhaps we might have done so; but he
was such a nasty bully, that it is strange that it
was left to Miss Jemima to show that he was a
great hulking coward.

This Titus Close had picked out a poor weak
little chap in Shy Dick's class to tyrannize over
especially. He did it on the sly, for, though
Rippingale had left school, the other big fellows
would soon have sent Mr. Titus to grass, and then
to Coventry, if they had found out that he was
up to games like that. Well, one day, after morn-
ing school, Shy Dick saw poor little Ted Siderfin
taking a bit of black "breeching" out of his
locker.

54 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

"What's that?" said Dick.

" Mr. Close's warming-strap," said Ted ; " and
I must make haste, or he '11 lick me worse." And
then he burst out crying, and told Dick that
every day before dinner he had to carry down
the leathern thong to " the limes " (there was a
thick clump of them at the farthest end of the
paddock) to be welted with it by the tyrannical
Titus.

Shy Dick blushed up to the top of his ears
at the thought of becoming a public character ;
but the blood came from a brave little heart, and
he made up his mind that he would do his best
to save his class-fellow from any more of such
cruelty.

" I '11 go with you," said Dick, " and we '11 both
pitch into him. That 's fair with a great big
fellow like that. Mamma told me not to fight,
but I 'm sure she wouldn't mind, if she knew all
about it."

Ted Siderfin almost forgot the daily drubbing

SHY DICK. 55

he had been expecting in his astonishment. Even
poor weakly little Ted — following the fashion,
like other weak people — had been in the habit
of poking fun at Miss Jemima. But now Shy
Dick puffed out his nostrils, and, though he shook
all over, it was through excitement, not funkiness.
He had to hurry Siderfin down to the limes. Ted
knew that he was likely to catch double through
being late ; but still he thought he was not likely
to better himself by taking a little chap like Shy
Dick with him, however brave Miss Jemima might
look and talk when the dread Titus was out of
sight.

When the little fellows had gone down the side
of the hollow in the paddock that hid them from
the other boys, they found Titus stamping like a
wild bull on the yellow leaves under the limes.

"Why didn't you come before, you young
beggar ? " he said, seizing Ted by the collar and
snatching the warming-strap ; " and what 's tftat
young beggar come for ? "

56 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

But, as he spoke, there was a look in Shy Dick's
eyes that made Titus feel queer. However, he
gave Ted one cruel lash across the shoulders with
the thong. The leather had no sooner fallen than
Miss Jemima flew at him like a wild cat. Shy
Dick didn't know anything about fighting, and,
trusting to the light of Nature, I am afraid that
he scratched as if he had been a real Miss Jemima,
as well as cuffed and kicked most lustily. Any-
how, he bunged up the eyes of the dread Titus,
gave him a bloody nose, and got him down upon
his back. Shy Dick got a black eye and a bloody
nose himself, but, though the blood spurted all
over his Italian-ironed collar, he — " spoony Miss
Jemima" five minutes before — did not care a
straw for such inconveniences. He rather looked
upon them as a soldier looks upon his medals.
He had fought against odds in a good cause, and
had conquered. He had suddenly become a little
man. If Titus Close had not been an awful
coward, of course Miss Jemima could not have

SHY DICK. 57

licked him like that; but Titus Close was an
awful coward. When Miss Jemima flew at him
— showing by the way he went in that he knew
nothing about boxing — instead of brushing off
the little fellow as contemptuously as a lion
whisks off a fly, or laughing at his little fists as
a mother laughs when her baby beats her, Titus
grew sick and cold, and in a few minutes was
lying on his back, rubbing his shins, and looking
a very miserable object. He was very proud of
his good looks — the servants and the needle-
woman thought him a handsome fellow ; but his
rosy cheeks were scratched, and his black eyes
were made black, or were soon to become so, in
another sense, and his Roman nose was staining
the worked shirt-front he was so cocky over.
Moreover, great tall Titus Close was lying on
the yellow leaves, actually whimpering ; and it
was little Shy Dick Ford — the scoffed-at Miss
Jemima — who had floored him and made him
blubber. Ted Siderfin took no part in the fight,

58 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

though it was fought on his behalf; but when he
found that his brutal despot was really down,
powerless, he wanted to kick him. But Shy Dick
would not suffer that.

" No, Ted," he said, " if you wanted to do that,
you should have pitched into him when he was
able to hit back again."

A mighty deal we all made of Miss Jemima
after this. The big fellows taught him " science,"
as an improvement on his rough-and-tumble,
and yet womanish, style of fighting. (Even his
warmest admirers were forced to apologize for
the scratching). The little fellows — especially
little Ted Siderfm — thought almost as much of
him as they did of Hercules, or any of those
fighting-men they were so fond of reading about
in Lempriere, when they ought to have been
learning their Propria qu& maribus, or getting
up their Delectus.

If Dick had not been a very good sort of little
fellow, he would have been spoilt by the notice

SHY DICK. 59

he got. Axleford must have seemed a. very
different place to him from what it had seemed —
say, at our last breaking-up ball. We always had
a breaking-up ball at the end of each half. The
sisters and cousins of the fellows who lived in
Dulchester and round about there used to be
invited, and we had what we called punch — a
mild infusion of lemon-pips, as I remember it
now, with just a hint now and then that it was
spirit-haunted — and altogether the affair was
very jolly. We knew the girls, because we had
the same dancing-master, and once or twice
every half he used to brigade us together, for a
kind of field-day, in the Cups Assembly Room
at Dulchester. He was a queer, clever little
fellow. His name was Thorne, but it ought to
have been Rosebud, he was such a soft, smiling
little chap. Sometimes, however, even he could
not help getting out of patience with us, when
we wouldn't pay any attention to his taps on the
back of his little kit, or his "one-two-three-four."

60 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

But it was his violin pupils that troubled him
most. One of them, I remember, always made a
bungle of his " stopping," and was making such
a terrible bungle of it one day, that poor little
Mr. Thorne threw down his fiddle, pushed his
fingers into his ears, and cried out in agony,

" My dear sir, it is wicked to behave so ! what
was your little finger made for?"

But I was talking about Shy Dick's first
breaking-up ball at Axleford. Though we did
laugh at him, he made us jealous, because the
girls looked at him so. He was a very good-
looking little chap, and he looked uncommonly
good-looking that night, spruced up with his
long curls and Italian-ironed collar. The girls,
however, soon began to sneer at Shy Dick, when
he stuck close to the wall, without saying a word
to any of them, and blushing all over when they
whisked by him. So we put up little Mary Rus-
sell to " take a rise " out of Shy Dick. She was
a black-eyed, roguish little puss, game for any

P.6i

SHY DICK. 6 1

kind of fun. She went up to Dick, and put her
hand upon her heart, and made him a profound
bow, and said, "Beautiful Miss Jemima, may I
have the honour of waltzing with you ? " And
then she caught him round the waist, and whirled
him round the room, whilst poor Dick looked
ready to cry from shame, and we were all almost
crying with laughing.

V.

LAZY TOM.

THERE is a proverb about a dog that was so
lazy that it used to lean against the wall
to bark. Well, really, I do believe that if Tom
Pine had been a dog he would have been lazier
than that: he would have leaned against the
wall without barking. He was a great tall fellow,
and we called him Ingens Finns. Agitatur ventis,
you know, is the rest of the sentence in the De-
lectus, but Tom Pine was never agitated by any-
thing. The little chaps used to do pretty nearly
what they liked with him, because they knew he
wouldn't whop them, whatever they did. Good
nature had something to do with this, but lazi-

LAZY TOM. 63

ness had more. Tom was not a stupid fellow,
and could say funny things sometimes when he
chose to take the trouble ; but both in and out
of school he was most abominably lazy. Big as
he was, he was only in Eutropius, and got taken
down by little fellows that could almost have run
between his legs without ducking. Tom didn't
care. I think, indeed, that he liked to get to
the bottom of the class, because there he could
lounge against the wall and rest his book and
his elbow on the window-seat Sometimes, how-
ever, he answered right by chance, and was
obliged to go up a place or two ; but he soon
dropped down again, and looked quite relieved
when he got back to his old corner. Tom was
pretty big when he first came to Axleford, and
had been put into a big fellows' class; but he
soon came dropping down from one lower class
to another. He was a funny fellow sometimes,
as I have said, and he used to say that he knew
he couldn't get to be top-boy of the school, and so

64 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

he meant to be bottom-boy before he had finished
— that that was far easier, and more out of the
common. At first the Doctor lectured him, and
when the lectures did him no good, the Doctor
licked him. But lectures and lickings were all the
same to Lazy Tom. In a lazy kind of way he
rather liked the Doctor for taking so much trouble
about him, and never bore any malice against
him, however hard he might hit — and the Doctor
could hit precious hard (though he was such a
nice fellow) when his lips turned white because
he thought a chap was obstinately defying him
— but the lickings could not drive the laziness
out of Ingens Pinus, any more than the lectures.
Then the Doctor thought of expelling Tom be-
cause of the bad example he set ; but Tom was
so good-natured that the Doctor couldn't make
up his mind to do so — especially since, after all,
Tom did very little harm, for the boys roasted
him even more than the masters did. So Tom
dropped down into the care of the under-masters,

LAZY TOM. 65

and they reported him, and kept him in, and
gave him impositions, and made fun of him ; but
no good came of it. He had stood the Doctor's
satire, and so he was not likely to mind theirs
much. He took his canings so good-naturedly
that the Doctor got tired of caning him, and
the ushers of reporting him. When he got an
imposition, he simply said that it was an impo-
sition ; and, as for being kept in, that was no pun-
ishment, since his favourite employment during
play-hours was snoring on one of the school-room
forms. On hot afternoons he always went to
sleep in school-time also, with his head inside his
locker ; and when he was roused up by having
his ears pulled, or a cut of the cane across his
shoulders, he used to yawn, and rub his eyes, and
stretch his long arms, in such a comically cool
fashion, that we were ready to die with laughing,
and the masters could not help laughing either.
And then, as soon as he got the chance, off he
would drop again. On hot afternoons, especially

66 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

when we had suet-pudding at dinner, Tom Pine
was always going to sleep like fat Joe in " Pick-
wick." Tom's way of doing his sums made us
laugh too. He used to put down all the figures
from I to o, until he came to the right one.
Although he had dropped to the Eutropius class,
he had heard the Doctor talking about " conjec-
tural emendations" to the Horace class, and
those Tom called his conjectural emendations.

Tom was such a good-natured, comical fellow,
that if he had not been lazy out of school as well,
perhaps he might have made some of us follow
his lazy example in school ; but it was impossible
to take a fellow who scarcely ever did anything
briskly for a model. When Tom did play, he did
it so drowsily, and so soon gave up, -that, when
sides were chosen, he was generally left almost
to the last. He could give tremendous drives at
cricket, if he did get at the ball ; but then he
was sure to be run out. He had the coolness to
propose that he should have a fellow to run for

LAZY TOM. 67

his hits. He never cared to bowl, and he was
not a mite of use in fielding. He put his hands
on his knees very scientifically, and there he kept
them. His favourite out-door "exercise" was
going adrift on the pond in the old punt. He
used to lie down on his back, pull his hat over his
eyes, and let the leaky old tub blunder about as it
pleased, sometimes stern foremost, and generally
broadside on.

The drill-sergeant tried hard to smarten Tom
up, but it was no good. " You Ve the makins of
a man in you, No. 9," the old fellow used to say;
"and it's a disgrace to your Queen and your
country that you should be sich a lout." Quite
little fellows could make their sword-sticks rattle
all about big Tom, without getting a single hit
back. When we went through the extension
motions, the sergeant ordered Tom to the front,
and jerked his arms out for him as if he had
been a semaphore. That was the only way to

make Tom go through them. When we went at

5 — 2

68 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

the double, Tom got his heels nicely trodden on;
and when the sergeant growled out "counter-
mar-r-ch!" instead of turning, Tom used to go
on mooning all by himself right ahead. He was
ready enough to stop when the sergeant told us
to " mark time," but then he never lifted his feet.
" Stand at ease " was the only order he really
obeyed. Lazy Tom was a sore trial to Sergeant
Joyce. The sergeant looked upon perfect drill
as the whole duty of man. He was very fond of
boasting that he had seen " hactif service in the
Penins'lur ; " but since that service consisted
merely in having been disembarked at some
Spanish town at the beginning of a fortnight, and
re-embarked at it, without having fired a shot, at
the end of the fortnight, and he had never since
had an opportunity of distinguishing himself on
the tented field, the sergeant's military career did
not furnish much material for interesting stories.
Not being able to tell us these, he tried to keep up
our respect for his military character by playing

LAZY TOM. 69

the martinet. He wore a military stock, although
the rest of his attire was mufti, and his fingers
used to itch to lay his cane across Tom Pine's
shoulders. The sergeant had so often reported
Tom, that, like the ushers, he had grown tired
of doing so. Indeed, the sergeant had not a
very great respect for the Doctor. Now and
then he had a bout with the sergeant with the
basket-hilted sticks, but the Doctor was not *.
scientific swordsman. All that he cared about
was to hit as hard and as often as he could — no
matter what cuts and thrusts he laid himself
open to. He despised guards and parries, and
banged away like an Irishman with his shillelagh.
This dashing style of fencing made the Doctor
seem the better man in our eyes ; and the con-
sciousness of this made the tremendous whacks
which the sergeant got across the arms and the
calves of the legs hurt all the more — the seeming
victory was obtained by such shamefully illegiti-
mate means. " Sir, s-s-s-sir," the poor wincing,

70 THE BOYS OF AXLE FORD.

indignant sergeant used to stutter, " if we had
been f-f-ightin' with st-ste-steel, I should have
k-k-killed you a d-d-dozen times in f-f-five mi-
nutes." To such an authority as the Doctor,
therefore, the sergeant was very unwilling to
appeal ; he knew that he would have to counter-
march himself at the double from Axleford, if
he laid his cane across our shoulders ; and so
Ingens Pinus cast a dark shadow on Sergeant
Joyce's life — at least the four hours a week of it
he spent at Axleford.

Just one thing more to show you what a lazy
fellow Tom was. There was a great garden at
Axleford, and once or twice during the fruit
season we were turned into it to pick and pull
ad libitum. (Perhaps we sometimes did the same
without leave, but I won't tell tales out of school
of that kind.) Well, one day, when we were all
in the garden, I saw Lazy Tom lying on his back
in his shirt-sleeves, with his hands locked under
his head. He had laid himself down under a

LAZY TOM. 71

gooseberry-bush, and he was eating the goose-
berries that drooped right into his mouth.

Yet even Lazy Tom could exert himself under
the stimulus of abnormal motives. He had a
grandmother who was very fond of him (and who
sadly encouraged his laziness — letting him have
his breakfast in bed when he spent his holidays
with her, and excusing his lolling-about languor
when he did get up, on the ground that the poor
boy — though he looked so much like her own
fine boy — had inherited his puny, lack-a-daisical
mother's constitution — Tom really was as strong
as a young cart-horse) ; and this old lady had a
black cat, with a brass collar, which, next to
Tom, she loved. Old women, therefore, and cats
— especially if they were black, and more espe-
cially if they wore brass collars — always found a
champion, even in Lazy Tom. It is not often
that they find champions amongst schoolboys
(who, I am afraid, are frequently not quite so
chivalrous as they make themselves out to have

72 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

been when they grow up and write books about
themselves), and, therefore, as I have not much
good to say of Tom Pine, I am glad to be able
to say this of him.

You remember the ruined old church with
the ivy on it, close to Axleford School ? Well,
one day when we were poking about in the
ruins, looking for birds' nests, and pulling up the
grass to get grubs and earthworms for bait, we
found a young black cat, not much bigger than
a kitten, wandering about there; and, I am
ashamed to say, a good many of us began to
take cockshies at it with anything we could lay
hold of. The poor scared little thing ran up the
hairy ivy-stems, and jumped from one heap of
rough brick and mortar to another, slipping and
almost tumbling to the ground every now and
then, while sticks, and stones, and bits of slate
and tile flew round it like hail. At last it ma-
naged to scramble on to a corner of the tower,
where there was hardly room enough for it to

LAZY TOM.

73

stand ; but there it stood mewing most piteously,
and wondering how it was ever to get down again.

Whilst we — again I am ashamed to say — were
enjoying its perplexity, Lazy Tom lounged up
with his hands in his pockets. They soon came
out of his pockets when he saw what we were at.
He didn't say anything, but he flung out his long
arms right and left like flails, and went through
the fellows big and little, as the police go through
the crowd on Lord Mayor's Day. Then up the
tower he climbed, and though the young cat
spat and scratched, he managed to lay hold of
it, and to bring it down safe in his shirt-bosom.
What is more, he took the trouble to find out
where it lived, and to carry it home.

Another time he had gone down into the vil-
lage to buy " parliament." (Tom was very fond
of parliament, and used to lie on his back munch-
ing it until he gave himself quite a thick yellow
moustache and imperial — but he gave a good
deal of it away too.) Well, Tom was just coming

74 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

out of the shop with his precious parcel of flat
gingerbread, when he saw a pack of the village
boys, some of them bigger than himself, mobbing
a poor bent old woman who went by the name
of the Axleford Witch. The young scamps were
flinging dung at her, and trying to hustle her
into a slimy pond. Grown-up people were look-
ing on ; some of them grinning, and none of
them interfering. But as soon as Tom saw what
was up, down went the parliament, smashing into
little bits ; and in two minutes half a dozen of
the young louts were splashing in the pond (comi-
cal figures they looked when they floundered out
half-smothered in mud and duckweed), and Tom
was squiring -the lonely old woman home to her
hovel as carefully as if she had been his grand-
mother.

I don't say that, generally speaking, Lazy Tom
was a " respectable character," but there is some-
thing to respect in almost everybody's character
if you will only take the trouble to look for it ;

LAZY TOM. 75

and now, at any rate, I do thoroughly respect
Lazy Tom for not having been ashamed to say
openly at school that he loved his grandmother,
and for always being ready to stand up for old
women and cats, because his grandmother was
an old woman, and had a cat that she was very
fond of.

VI.

FUNNY PAT.

PAT was called Pat because his name was
Wix— Wix M'Carthy. His father had
married an Englishwoman, a Miss Wix, and Pat
had been christened in honour of his mother's
family. But Wix seemed such a stupid name
for a funny little fellow that was half an Irish-
man ; and so we called him Pat. Pat was a
genuine little Irishman of the novel and play
type (in real life Irishmen are often dull and
peaceable enough) : he seemed to think that the
world was made to be funny and to fight in, or
rather always to be funny in; fighting, in his

FUNNY PAT. 77

opinion, being one of the best bits of the fun.
But I am not going to write about his fights.
Fights between schoolboys, I know, sometimes
seem almost unavoidable, but I think now that
there were a good many loo many such fights in
my schooldays. (I thought so then, when I got
licked.) I don't know how things are now-a-days.
I have heard that they are much better, and have
read that, when an Eton boy was asked the rea-
son, he answered, " I suppose we funk each other."
I hope, however, that a better reason than that
" one 's afraid, an' t'other durstn't " answer could
be given. Perhaps instead of " funking," school-
boys respect one another more than they did, and
themselves to boot. After all, if you think of the
causes of schoolboys' fights, there is not, generally
speaking, much reason to crow over the giving or
getting of a black eye in them. And it is a very
great mistake to think that a schoolboy who gets
fame as a " bruiser " is necessarily a manly fellow.
Some such fellows turn out to be great " sheep,"

78 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD

as the Australians say, when the great Battle of
Life has to be fought.

But you don't like " preaching " when you
want to hear a story ; and I don't like it either
when I am trying to tell one : so now for some
of Funny Pat's funny pranks.

There was a tra.p-door in the roof of the
school-house at Axleford. It was generally kept
padlocked, but now and then we found it open
when we slipped up to the garret-floor to recon-
noitre ; and, when we did find it open, we always
made a point of clambering through it on to the
roof. I suppose the chief charm of these clan-
destine expeditions was that they lucre clandes-
tine— that we ran the risk of being kept in
through creeping out. Anyhow, we thought it
prime fun to get out upon the roof; and until a
fellow had scratched his name upon the leads,
he had not won his spurs in school opinion. The
leads were covered with names, and initials, and
caricatures, and epigrams, and sentimental verses

FUNNY PAT. 79

to our sweethearts ; and besides our literary and
artistic contributions, every workman that had
been up to mend the roof seemed to have thought
it necessary to prick out the shape of his foot on
the leads, with his name running from heel to
toe, or a heart with his initials and his young
woman's grouped in the middle in a true-lover's
knot. The leads in themselves were worth climb-
ing up to see, and then there were I can't remem-
ber how many roof-ridges of mossy lichened tiles
to scramble over, and grass and wallflowers grew
on them ; and we could get sparrows' and star-
lings' and swallows' eggs, and sometimes young
sparrows and starlings and swallows, out of the
nests in the water-spouts, and the holes in the
walls and under the eaves ; and we could almost
look into the rooks' nests in the elms, that seemed
only a jump off the house ; and see the country
for miles round ; and scare the servants by sud-
denly making faces at them through the sky-
lights and tapping against garret-windows ; and

So THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

shy little bits of mortar plump down upon the
tops of the ushers' hats, and watch them start
and look round puzzled, and then walk on again,
trying to make themselves believe it was all
fancy, until presently some more little bits came
rattling down, and the ushers got quite angry,
because they could not make out where they
came from. Finally, we could tear our clothes,
and scratch our hands and faces, and make our-
selves generally deliciously limy, and slimy, and
grimy on the roof. So what wonder we got out
at the trap-door whenever we found it open ?

Pat was very fond of roaming on the roof. He
could climb like a cat or a monkey, and prided
himself on knowing all its ins and outs better
than any other fellow. Well, one summer even-
ing the Doctor gave a party. The under-masters
and some of the big fellows were invited to it,
and the rest of us were left to amuse ourselves
as we pleased. Pat, and two or three of his
chums, stole up the garret stairs to the trap-door.

FUNNY PAT. 8 1

In the gloom it seemed to be locked, but, when
Pat ran up the steps, he found that, though the
padlock was in the hasp, the key had been turned
in a hurry, and so the padlock was not fastened.

We were soon clambering over the tiles, and
presently we got into an argument about one of
the chimneys. There were all kinds of chimneys
— high, narrow chimneys; low, broad chimneys ;
chimneys with pots, and chimneys with cowls ;
single chimneys, and wall-like stacks of chim-
neys, sticking up in all kinds of queer places in
the roof. This was a low chimney in the middle
of the house, with a gaping mouth like a little
well ; and Pat maintained that it was the chim-
ney of the Doctor's study, whilst the others
would have it that the chimney belonged to the
sick-room.

" Faith, I '11 go down and make ye see you 're
wrong with my own eyes," said Pat, who was
somewhat Irish also in his way of expressing
himself, and in a second he was lowering himself

82 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

down the jagged shaft as a bear backs down a
hollow tree.

He got on pretty well for a yard or two, but
then a brick came out in his hand, and down
went poor Pat in a shower of sooty mortar. A
bend in the chimney brought him up before he
was much hurt ; and when we called down to
him, he shouted up to us to get him a rope.

We ran to the trap-door, but it was fast. One
of the servants, I suppose, had noticed how we
had left it, and not knowing any one was on the
roof, had locked us out.

" Oh, be hanged if you can't get a rope ! I 'd
get one somehow if I was up there ! What am
I to do at all, at all ? " grumbled Pat in comical
perplexity. "Sure, I must try to come up the
way I came down."

But facilis dcsccnsus Averni, you know: to
get up again hoc opus, hie labor est. Pat's foot
slipped. We could hear him shouting and slid-
ing down the incline that had first stopped him,

FUNNY PAT. 83

in a rattling avalanche of loose lime and brick.
Then we heard a thud as if he had dropped ever
so many feet farther down ; and then we were
so scared that, not minding who heard us, we
scrambled to the side of the roof nearest the
playground, and shouted with might and main
for help. Before we could get any help from
that quarter, however, the tall Doctor came up
through the trap, like Banquo's ghost in Macbeth.

" This way, boys," he said, not half so crossly
as we expected ; and then he marched us down,
not by the back stairs we had come up, but by
the front stairs to the open drawing-room door.

"Walk in," he said, when we got there; and
in we huddled, feeling very sheepish in our dusty
clothes.

"These are the rest of the gang, ladies," said
the Doctor : " not very formidable burglars, are
they ? I think we needn't feel nervous any more."

And then everybody laughed, and we felt more

sheepish than ever. But saucy Pat, though he

6 — 2

84 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD,

was twenty times the guy any of us was — ragged,
and scratched, and bruised, and as black as a
sweep, as he stood in the midst of a muddle on
the hearthrug — had the cheek to say,

" Sure, then, I did scare ye, sir ! "

And then there was another general laugh,
and the ladies said,

" Don't punish them, Doctor — it 's so fortunate
•the little fellow has not broken his neck."

Pat had inherited blarney as well as bulls, and
when he heard that, he made the ladies a very
polite bow and said,

" Faith, I 'd be glad to break it to get into
your company, ladies."

Then they all laughed again, and we were
ordered off to bed ; but that was all the punish-
ment we got. All of us had been wrong about
the chimney. It was the drawing-room chimney,
and when Pat fell the last time, he had tumbled
flop into the white-and-gold shavings in the old-
fashioned, wide drawing-room fireplace. The

FUNNY PAT. 85

mysterious noises up the chimney that had been
heard before had caused some perturbation
amongst the Doctor's guests, and when black
Pat tumbled into the fire-shavings, all the women
had screamed, and all the men and boys had
made a rush to seize the supposed robber. When
the Doctor pulled Pat out, nobody knew him at
first. They all thought he was a burglar's Oliver
Twist ; but Pat had called out,

"I'm M'Carthy, sir — I thought it was your
study, sir."

" And what did you want to do in my study ? "
asked the Doctor.

"Sure, I didn't expect to find ye in it, sir,"
answered Pat ; and it being notorious that the
Doctor trusted to past labour for his lore, and
was not often in those days to be found in his
study, Pat's answer tallied so completely with
his name that the general laughter began which
got us off scot-free, and in which the Doctor
joined as heartily as anybody.

86 THE BOYS OF AXLE FORD.

Pat certainly was one of the cheekiest fellows
I ever knew. He was a very good mimic (ex-
cept that he could not quite get rid of his
brogue), and, when he "dressed up," his own
mother would scarcely have known him. He
was a free-handed little fellow, and so could
easily get clothes lent him by the servants and
the cottage boys and girls, and all kinds of tricks
he used to play in them. Once he made himself
up into a wooden-legged old pieman, and stumped
into the playground with a trayful of pastry. He
met one of the masters, and asked him very re-
spectfully whether " an ould man, as wanted to
arn a crust, might have lave to sell some shu-
parior poys to the young gintlemen ; " and when
the usher gave him leave, Pat gravely offered
him one of the "poys" as an acknowledgment
of his kindness, and then Pat took his stand at
the school-room door, and drove a roaring trade.
He would have cleared off his stock before we
had found him out if one of the fellows, who

FUNNY PAT. 87

thought himself very 'cute, had not happened to
say, " I don't believe he is Irish : go and fetch
little Pat, he'll soon find out whether the old
chap is a ' counthryman ' of his." This was too
much for Pat. He shouted out in his natural
voice, " Faith, he is, Briggs ! " and then away he
hopped on his wooden leg, with Briggs after him.
It was not often, however, that Pat tried to
gammon us, because we got so up to him, after
a bit, that we used to suspect every tramp that
came near the school of being Pat. But on the
farmers' wives and daughters he was always
playing tricks. He was tall for his age, and
made quite a handsome gipsy-girl, when he had
parted his black hair in the middle, and stained
his face and hands with walnut-juice. His
roguish eyes were gipsy's ready-made, and with
a faded red cloak over his girl's clothes, and a
low-crowned straw hat on, or a chequered ker-
chief tied under his chin, Pat looked a first-rate
young fortune-teller. And then he knew enough

88 THE BOYS OF AXLE FORD.

of the people whose fortunes he told to make
them gape with astonishment. Outrageous for-
tunes he used to tell, and yet the silly people
more than half believed them at first. Mind, I
am not praising these pranks of Master Pat's,
and yet I can't help thinking that his fortune-
telling did some good. As drunkards have been
cured by soaking everything they ate in brandy,
so, perhaps, silly people may be cured by giving
them unlimited doses of folly.

The Squire at Axleford Hall was a rich old
bachelor — a very nervous old gentleman, who
did not hunt, or shoot, or do anything but coddle
himself. He scarcely ever showed outside the
Hall on week-days, and on Sunday mornings he
slipped into his pew at church through a side
door as if he was afraid that he would shrivel up
like a jelly-fish if anybody looked at him. High
curtains hung all round the pew, and it was car-
peted and had chairs in it — a faded carpet and
heavy old-fashioned chairs like those you can

FUNNY PAT. 89

see at an old inn. It had a fireplace too, and
every Sunday morning — no matter how hot it
might be — the fire was lighted in it, and the
Squire sat close by the fire, in top-boots, and
a queer little grey pig-tail sticking out over
the collar of his spencer. We could see him
from the gallery, where we sat in the front seats
below the organ, but he made such a fuss if
he fancied that anybody had been looking at
him that we could only venture to peep between
our fingers. We did not like Squire Leake. He
seemed such a namby-pamby old noodle, and,
though he was never out himself, his bailiff was
always coming, " with the Squire's compliments,"
to complain of our trespasses in the park. There
was somebody else who was always complaining
of our trespasses — Miss Smith, a maiden lady,
who farmed about eighty acres of land, known
in the Squire's deeds and maps, and general par-
lance, as "Pork End." Miss Smith, I believe,
was a pretty good farmer, but she was not a very

90 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

wise woman in other respects. She thought her-
self very " genteel," and tried hard to make her
neighbours call her farm " Broad Oaks ; " but they
wouldn't, because from time immemorial it had
been known in Axleford as Pork End. Though
she was so very "genteel." Miss Smith was very
superstitious, and Pat, dressed up in his gipsy
cloak, made her believe that the shy, grumpy
Squire was in love with her. Pat (mind again, I
say that I don't approve of such fibs) made her
believe also that the Squire wished to meet her
at six o'clock in the evening at a place to which
he or she (Pat) was appointed to guide her. Pat
meant to march Miss Smith right through the
village, and then let the Leake story leak out.
It was very unchivalrous, of course, in Pat to lay
such a plot, and very abominable in his chums to
chuckle at the thought of seeing it succeed ; but
then, really, Miss Smith had got us such a lot of
Phaedrus's Fables to learn by heart, by her fuss
about nothing, that we could not help thinking

FUNNY PAT. 91

that she owed us some fun in return. Besides,
Pat had tried to " take a rise " out of the Squire
too. He had written him a mysterious letter
with a skewer, inviting him to meet some one
who could tell him a great secret about his pro-
perty, if he came alone to the Cage on the com-
mon. We had very faint hopes of this trick
answering, but two of us had been told off to
hide by the Cage to see if the Squire did come.
Some half-dozen of us went to the cottage where
Pat borrowed his gipsy clothes. He soon dressed,
and was slouching along the cottage garden in
them en route for Miss Smith's, when we saw that
he had hitched up his petticoats so high that his
trousers could be plainly seen beneath. We were
going to call him back, when whom should we
see coming up to the garden gate but the Doctor?
Back we ran into the cottage, but Pat slouched
on, quite unconscious of the trouser-legs that
betrayed him. He made a demure bob to the
Doctor (we could see that he looked rather

92 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

scared, though), and was passing on, but the
Doctor stopped him.

"Oh, you 're the gipsy I Ve heard about lately,"
said the Doctor. "What 's your name, my pretty
girl?"

"Jenny Giles, your honour," answered Pat,
making another bob, and trying to get away.

But the Doctor laid his hand on Pat's shoulder,
and said,

"Jenny Giles, is it? Then I must take you
into custody on suspicion of stealing a pair of
trousers belonging to a pupil of mine of the name
of M'Carthy," and he tapped Pat on the legs
with his stick.

Then the Doctor saw us, and made us come
out and tell him all about it ; and a nice lecture
we had when we got back to school, and we were
not allowed to go out of bounds for a month
afterwards. That did not satisfy Miss Smith,
however, when she found how she had been done.
She sent a note to the Doctor to tell him he was

FUNNY PAT. 93

a "disgrace to his sect," for encouraging his
young vagabonds in insulting respectable folk
that could buy him up twice over — he ought to
have half-thrashed the life out of the young black-
guards. We should have got a licking if the
Doctor had not caught us — at least the two told
off for the Cage would. The Squire had smelt
a rat, and sent his bailiff to the common with a
horsewhip, and orders to lay it about the shoul-
ders of any one he found prowling round the
Cage. And the bailiff had mounted guard there
for three hours and more.

"Faith, then, it's a comfort to think we got
some fun out of somebody," said incorrigible Pat,
when he heard the news.

VII.

BLUSTERING FRED.

WE always had a whole holiday on the
Doctor's birthday, and spent it by the
sea at Samphire Marshby. The Doctor hired a
'bus and all kinds of traps at Dulchester, and we
had a jolly ride to Marshby, and a jolly day
there, and a jolly ride back. A nice row we used
to make when we drove through Dulchester and
the roadside villages. The people came to their
doors to stare, just as if we had been troops on
the march. It was almost the only excitement
some of the quiet country folk had in the year,
to see the "Axleford young gen'lemen out a-
plasurin." The Doctor had been kind enough to

BLUSTERING FRED. 95

get born in the last week in May, when all the
leaves are out, but still in the full freshness of
their green, and when it is pretty sure to be
warm, and yet not too warm. A first-rate time
that is, both for a ride through the country and
a day by the sea.

Blustering Fred Chapman always came out
very strong on the Doctor's birthday. Perhaps
Fred wasn't such a bad sort of fellow at bottom,
but he was the kind of chap that schoolboys are
apt to call " no end of an ass." He went about
like a gale of wind or a roaring lion, and did
everything with a splutter. According to Fred,
no other fellow could do anything half as well as
he could, or had things half as good, or friends
half as rich, clever, and remarkable in every way
as his own. It was no use trying to get in a
word against Fred. " He 'd talk a dog's hind-
leg off, that young feller would," the disgusted
old gardener used to say, when Fred had been
laying down the law about cucumbers and car-

96 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

nations, and things of that kind. I don't know
what his friends made of Fred. He would have
done famously for either an Old Bailey lawyer
or a Cheap Jack. Fred himself talked as if he
could have his choice between being made Prime
Minister, or Commander-in-Chief, or Lord Chan-
cellor, or Archbishop of Canterbury. We called
him Frederick the Great, and he took the name
quite seriously.

One "Doctor's birthday" I sat close by his
blustering majesty on the road to Marshby, and
had to spend part of the day when we got there
with him. If I tell you a little of how he went
on then, it will give you a notion of the way he
always went on.

When the traps came about six in the morning
to Axleford (we had a scrambling kind of break-
fast before we started, and then another picnic
breakfast when we got to Marshby), Chapman
went about looking at the harness, and lifting up
the horses' feet, and talking about "points," and

BLUSTERING FRED. 97

" pasterns," and " barrels," and " Roman noses,"
as if he was a horse-dealer. The drivers thought
at first that he must know something about
horses, but they soon found out that he didn't
know anything, and then they poked fun at
him.

" There 's an old screw," he said, pointing to
one horse; "your master ought to be ashamed
to send such a thing as that out of his yard."

" Sich a thing as that ! " the driver answered.
" Why, there ain't a better 'oss in the stables, an'
he 's on'y risin' four ; an' you don't call tJiat hold,
do ye, sir ? You jist look in his mouth."

Chapman tried to, but he knew just as well
how to set about it as a cat knows how to play
the fiddle. The horse laid down his ears, and
wriggled his head about, and when he did open
his mouth, it was to give a grab at Chapman that
made him hop back like a parched pea.

" You 're out o' practice, I s'pose, sir, bein' at
school so long," the man grinned. " This is the

98 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

way you should take 'old on 'em. Now then, you
give a look at his teeth."

Chapman tried to look very wise, and then
he shouted,

" I knew I was right — that horse is twenty
years old, if he 's a day."

" Why didn't you say two 'underd, when you
was about it ? Much you knows about 'osses,"
was the contemptuous rejoinder.

Chapman began to bluster about the lots of
horses his uncle kept, but it had no effect upon
the man, except to make him, as we thought,
quite witty.

"Ah, yes, I expect all the 'osses you knows
about is at your uncle s, an' you never takes 'em
hout."

Chapman was very savage when he saw us
laughing, and wanted to make us believe that it
was the man and not himself who knew nothing
about horses — only we didn't.

The 'bus started first, with nearly a score of

BLUSTERING FRED. 99

small boys stowed inside, and about a dozen
middle-sized fellows outside. Blustering Fred,
of course, monopolized the box-seat, and I sat
just behind him. It was a beautiful morning ;
we had all got pea-shooters, and plenty of peas ;
and we should have been as jolly as the larks
that were singing up all round us if it had not
been for Chapman's blather.

As soon as we got outside the gates, he wanted
to drive — "tool the tits," he called it, being so
very " knowing." But the driver had taken Mr.
Fred's measure, and wouldn't let him until we
were on the other side of Dulchester, and then
the man only let Fred touch the reins (" finger-
ing the ribbons," Fred called it) when the road
was quite straight, and level, and empty for a
long way ahead. Fred was very indignant ; but
the man was not going to risk his own place, and
his horses' knees, and our necks, for such a tip as
Chapman was likely to give him. If Frederick
the Great, however, often looked very sulky on his

7 — 2

THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

box-seat throne, the rest of us had a very merry
ride. We peppered the few cottages we passed on
the road to Dulchester, and the women and girls
came to the doors to grin, and the small boys
ran out into the gardens and returned our fire of
peas with pebbles. We peppered the servant-girls
that were cleaning the windows, and washing the
doorsteps, and shaking the mats, and the men
and boys who were taking down shop shutters
and sweeping out shops, as we drove through
clean, quiet, sunny Dulchester ; and the people
seemed to think it good fun to be peppered, and
knocked off work to chaff and to be chaffed. On
the other side of Dulchester, where the road ran
once more between straggling, tangled hedges,
freshly green, and freshly green hedgerow trees,
as yet unclogged with dust, with still more freshly
green young corn beyond, and lush grass, and
golden buttercups, and tasselled tufts of cowslips,
starry ox-eyes, and a dredging, like silvery flour,
of daisies and ladies'-smock, " cuck-oo, cuck-oo "

BLUSTERING FRED. 101

constantly sounded so close to us that we felt
half angry, because we could not see where the
sound came from. And there were grey-tilted
carriers' carts to fire volleys into ; and farmers,
with brown-red faces like well-done roast-beef,
weighing down their gigs on one side, or jog-
ging along on horses as plump as themselves;
and the people cheered, though we did pepper
them, when we drove through the villages ; and
in one there was a whole girls' school peeping
over their mossy garden wall, and wishing that
they were going to the sea-side with us. We
wished so, too ; for the girls looked very pretty
in their sprigged muslins, and without their
bonnets. It was " quite a picture " to see them
in the half-sunny, half-shady old garden, full of
flowering lilacs and laburnums, apple trees and
ribes, flags, lavender, lilies of the valley, purple
stocks and wallflowers, that we could smell a
hundred yards off, and red and white hawthorn,
— and red and white roses, too, for everything

THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

was very forward that bright May. We were, at
any rate. Although we only saw them once a
year (they were indoors when we went back in
the evening), we carried on a kind of flirtation
with the Goose Green girls, and gave them an
annual bombardment of pink cocked-hat billets-
a'ciu', ballasted with comfits, and little dolls,
and packets of acidulated drops and all kinds
of sweetstuff. We were too gallant to fire peas
at them. Chapman had tried hard to get the
man to let him drive past " The Misses Cand-
lers' Seminary for Young Ladies," but the man
wouldn't ; so Chapman tried hard to look as if
he had only given up the reins for a minute or
two, that he might have his hands free to pelt
the girls, and take off his hat, and kiss his fingers
to them. But Blustering Fred made a mull of
his politeness. He snatched a packet of lollies
from one of the fellows behind to fling to the
girls, and the girls cried out, " Oh, you stingy ! "
They wouldn't look at him when he was blowing

BLUSTERING FRED. 10.,

them kisses, but they did look at him, and laugh
at him too, when he dropped his hat into a puddle,
and had to get down to pick it up, and run after
the 'bus rubbing the mud off, and shouting, be-
cause the driver had started again as soon as
Fred was down.

Fred could roar, as I have told you, and there-
fore the man had no excuse ; but he pretended
not to hear Fred until we got outside the village
— on to the common dotted with golden furze,
and grey and white geese — which had given
Goose Green its name. There the man stopped,
and when Chapman came up panting, the saucy
fellow said with a sly grin,

"Law, sir, I thought you did it a-purpose, to
have a chat with the young ladies that seemed
so fond of ye, an' then come on by the next
wehicle."

Fred jumped at this salve to his dignity, and
'talked as if what the man had said was just what
he had meant to do, if he had not found that we

104 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

were a long way ahead of all the other " wehicles."
But we grinned so, when he climbed up into his
seat — and the driver grinned so, too — that Fred
got quite furious. To smooth down his ruffled
feathers, Fred was allowed to drive across the
common, though there was a donkey-cart in sight.
We came up to it in the middle of the common,
where four roads crossed beneath a white finger-
post in a little diamond-shaped island of green
turf. Just before we got there, one of the donkeys
that were dragging their clogs over the common
began to bray, and directly afterwards all the
rest were braying in chorus, and the donkey in
the cart stood stock-still in the middle of the
road, and lifted up his head and hee-hawed al-
most under the noses of our horses. They tried
to shy, but they shied opposite ways, and so they
only knocked their heads together ; they tried to
jib, but the 'bus was too heavy for them ; and
so off they started at full gallop. Fred had no
more command over them than a baby, and yet

BLUSTERING FRED. 105

he would keep hold of the reins when the man
tried to snatch them from him. We capsized the
donkey-cart, we carried away one of the arms of
the finger-post, and yet Blustering Fred was so
proud of his driving that he still wouldn't let go of
the reins, and made confusion worse confounded.
A little way beyond the finger-post the road
sloped between high furze-banks into a steep hill,
that would have brought the collars almost on to
the horses' ears if we had been going down quietly
and with the skid on. Down that we rattled at
an awful rate. The 'bus rolled like a ship at sea.
The youngsters inside squealed like passengers
battened down under hatches in a storm. We
outsides had to hold on like sailors reefing in
the " roaring forties." Our faces as well as our
knuckles grew very white. Fred was as scared
as any of us, and would have been glad enough
to give up the reins then, but he seemed not to
know how, until the driver plumped himself down
on Fred's knees, and grabbed the reins below

106 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

Fred's hands. We were half-way up the hill be-
yond the hollow at the foot of the common,
however, before the horses were pulled up. Fred
looked rather crestfallen when he crawled out,
crushed and crumpled, from beneath the man
who had made a cushion of him ; and he had
to go back to pick up the whip that he had
dropped ; but by the time we got to Marshby,
he was talking as big as ever, and making out
that, if it had not been for him, we should all
have broken our necks.

We gave Fred as wide a berth as we could at
Marshby. When you want to enjoy yourself, you
know, it is not pleasant to have a fellow close by
who is always trying to make you believe that
you have no business to be enjoying yourself,
because what you are seeing and doing is not
nearly so fine as what he has seen and done
somewhere else.

Samphire Marshby certainly is not a very beau-
tiful watering-place. There is a dreary marsh be-

BLUSTERING FRED. 107

hind it, and the cliffs are only crumbling earth
that is always dropping into the sea. Great bits,
with corn still upright on them, plump and slide
down upon the sands. There is a huge zigzag
crack in the sea-wall of the Esplanade too, that
makes you think that that, and the Terrace
houses on the top of it, will soon be gobbled up
by the pea-soupy waters that swallowed the old
church and hundreds of acres of good wheat-
land, long before Marshby became a watering-
place. Still, Marshby has boats and bathing-
machines, and donkeys and goat-chaises, and a
jetty and a preventive station, and two martello
towers, and a lofty landmark with corkscrew
stairs up to the top, and an " antediluvian cliff,"
full of shells all turned the wrong way ; and a
good beach with sea-weedy groynes to jump
and clamber over : so we used to make ourselves
very jolly there, though Chapman was always
saying, " Ah, you Ve never been at Tenby " and
a score of other places. According to his own

io8 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

account, he had done wonders in the swimming,
fishing, and boating line in the watering-places
he went to in the holidays. He said, indeed,
that he had steered a fife-boat that went out
from Torquay to rescue the crew of a wrecked
West Indiaman. But we did not put much
faith in Master Fred's stories. It seemed so
strange that he should be such a hero at other
watering-places where we couldn't see him, and
yet such a muff at Marshby where we could see
him. When he bathed there, h'e never went in
much over his waist, and he used to cut ashore
as soon as he saw a big, curling, curly wave
coming. As for rowing! He made all kinds
of grand excuses before we could get him into
a boat ; but, when he did get in, he was always
catching crabs, if he took an oar, and that was
all the fishing he did. Nevertheless, he used to
go on bragging as loudly as ever about his boat-
ing in places where there was " a real sea on — not
a muddy ditch like the Samphire Marshby sea."

BLUSTERING FRED. 109

That day I am telling you about, I was un-
lucky enough to go out in a sailing-boat which
Fred had helped to hire. The boatman let him
steer, because he boasted so, but Chapman didn't
even know what "port" and "starboard" meant.
Whatever the man said, Chapman always put
the boat's head just where he oughtn't to have
put it. We ran foul of another boat, and we
were nearly capsized in a puff of wind because
Chapman hauled in the sheet when the man
shouted " Let go," and we got almost under the
paddles of the Fire Queen, from London, as she
splashed up alongside the jetty; and then Chap-
man managed to jam us between two of the
blistered, brown-black jetty piles. The boat
crunched like a crushed basket, and pop ! pop !
went the pods of the sea-weed that hung from
the piles like dishevelled hair, as we ground
against them. The people leaning over the rails
of the steamboat and the jetty chaffed Master
Fred nicely on his seamanship ; and so did we

I io THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

when we got safe ashore. But when he was safe
ashore he talked as big as ever. The Marshby
people, he said, were only half-and-half sailors,
and the steamboat people were mere Cockneys —
none of them really understood anything about
sailing a boat — he was always right when he
went out with South-coast men and West-coast
men — they didn't even know the right names of
things on the East coast — he had done just what
the man had really told him to do, though he
did think it was wrong, because he felt bound
to obey orders — and so on, and so on.

Fred deserved to get chaffed, didn't he ? But
then, unfortunately, chaffing him was very much
like peppering a hippopotamus with peas.

I didn't see any more of Fred that day until
the 'bus was just going to start for Axleford
again in the evening dusk. The rest of us took
donkeys and tried to get up a steeple-chase over
the wooden breakwaters when we landed from
the boat; but Fred was "too much of a man" to

BLUSTERING FRED. in

ride a donkey. The fact was that he didn't like
being sent every now and then over the donkey's
head; but since one's "dignity" is the only
thing that gets hurt in such a spill on sand, that
seems to me the best bit of fun in sea-shore
donkey-riding.

After our steeple-chase we joined the other
fellows, who were clustering for dinner on the
beach ; but, though Fred's appetite was nearly
as big as his talk, he was not fussing about the
hampers as usual, as if he was the only one who
knew how a sea-side picnic ought to be managed.
After dinner we scattered again, with orders to
muster for tea before starting at the Porto Bello
Inn, where the traps were put up, at about 8 P.M.
We had more boating and donkey-racing, and
we bathed and lolled on the sunny sands, and
made ducks and drakes on the sunny waters with
smooth little bits of tile and slate and stone,
and we picked up sea-weed and shells on the
beach, and got our fingers nipped by trying to

H2 THE BOYS OF AXLE FORD.

catch little crabs, and borrowed nets from the
shrimper-boys and girls, who were plodding along
the shore knee-deep, pushing their nets before
them ; but though we tried to push just as the
shrimpers did, we didn't get much besides wet
trousers. We wandered down to the marshes,
too, and picked samphire to pickle foi our bed-
room suppers on the sly; and we chatted with
the brown, civil coast-guardmen lounging about
their canvas-covered boat, basking in the sun-
light, and their brass gun that blazed like half
a dozen golden thistles, and cleaning and sharp-
ening their cutlasses and pistols in the cool dark
beat-shed ; and the grey-haired lieutenant, with
a gold band round his cap, came out of his
whitewashed little house, and talked to us — and
we were very much astonished to find that such
a veteran had not fought at Trafalgar and been
all over the world, and that he seemed as pleased
at getting fresh people, though they were only
schoolboys, to talk to, as any old cottage-woman

BLUSTERING FRED. 113

at Axleford would have been ; and the Irish
sailor left in charge of the one occupied martello
tower let us in when we crossed the plank bridge
over the stagnant moat, and took us up to the
top of the tower, and showed us where the gun
used to stand, and made jokes, and generally
proved himself a very pleasant fellow, although
we could not help looking severely at him when
he, a mere common sailor (an Irish sailor, too),
took the unwarrantable liberty of ridiculing the
English of boys belonging to far-famed (in Cal-
fmghamshire) Axleford School. We had asked
him, very politely, if we might go over the tower,
and he had answered, very impertinently, "Faith,
no, unless ye want to break your necks." And
we climbed up to the top of the landmark, and
saw the green sea and the green land spread out
beneath us like an embossed map. Altogether,
the time passed so pleasantly that we never
thought of Chapman. We did not think of him
at tea-time either, or after tea — until the traps

114 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

were pushed and pulled out of the cart-sheds,
and the horses came clumping over the thresholds
of the stables, and we were told off again for the
ride home. Then Chapman was missed, but no
one had seen or heard of him since the morning.
Notwithstanding — or rather because of — his
bluster, however, we felt pretty sure that he had
not run into any danger, and so off we went, ex-
pecting he would turn up in time to come on in
one of the other traps. "We can git over the
loss of his hinterestin' serciety," the driver of our
'bus remarked. But when we had got about a
quarter of a mile from Marshby, up started some-
thing naked from the ditch, and shouted to us to
stop. It was poor Fred, with only a wet hat and
one waterlogged boot on. He told us a cock-
and-bull story about his having stripped to swim
out to the rescue of an old gentleman in a Bath
chair, whom he had seen overtaken by the tide
about a mile from shore, and about his clothes
being stolen whilst he was away, and his having

BLUSTERING FRED. 115

to creep round by the back of the cliff and over
the marshes, and hide in the ditch to wait for us,
because he was ashamed to walk into the town
in buff. All except the last part sounded very
mythical, but, of course, that wasn't a time to
cross-question Fred. The driver lent him a top-
coat, and two horse-cloths, and two nosebags to
put his feet into, and he had to ride home inside,
muffled up like a mummy, instead of cutting a
swell and cracking jokes on the box-seat. We
found out afterwards how Fred had lost his
clothes. He always said that the story was all a
lie ; but putting what we guessed with what we
heard from a coast-guardman who had been on
the cliff at the time, together, we could account
for Fred's unfledged state without having to tax
our imaginations to get up an invalid old gentle-
man.

Just beyond the landmark at Marshby, where
the coast-line turns in towards the backwater

that sprawls like a slate-coloured glove spread

8—2

li 6 THE BOYS OF AXLE FORD.

out on a green table-cloth, there is a sheltered,

long, level bit of beach. Fred had gone to bathe

there by himself, because he could go a long

way out without getting very deep, and in fine

weather the water there was almost as smooth

as a mill:pond. He had forgotten, though, that

the tide came in very fast over the flat sands;

and whilst he was splashing in the lukewarm

water, all his clothes, excepting the foundered

hat and boot, had gone afloat, and were far

beyond his reach when he got back to land.

There was nothing really to be ashamed of in

all this ; but Fred still stuck to the story of the

Bath chair. When we want other people to think

us wiser, and braver, and in every way greater

geniuses and heroes than we are, we mean a lot

of big lies, and are sadly tempted to tell a lot of

big lies when we are afraid that our sham Is seen

through.

VIII.

HONEST NED.

HONESTY" was the name by
which Ned Hargreaves went at Axle-
ford ; and though it is sometimes given to
donkeys, it was a name to be proud of. Most
of us, I hope, were " indifferent honest," in word
and deed, at any rate ; but Ned was thoroughly
honest in thought as well as word and deed.
Even fellows who would scorn to tell a down-
right lie, or to crib anything from a schoolmate,
make " mental reservations " sometimes, and
have somewhat lax notions of meum and tuum
when other people's — orchards, say — are con-
cerned ; but Ned was honest to the back-bone.

ii8 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

He hated everything underhand, however little
under the hand it might be. At least that was
the opinion we had of him, and we could not
help respecting him accordingly.

Except his honesty, there was nothing remark-
able about Ned. He was an average kind of
boy; neither stronger, nor taller, nor better-
looking, nor more daring, nor freer-handed, nor
cleverer, nor fonder of work than the ruck of
boys of his age. We couldn't help wondering
sometimes that we respected him as we did.

The Fifth of November was always a great
day with us at Axleford. For a week beforehand
we could scarcely do any work for thinking of it.
One Fifth, I remember, was an especially jolly
day, or rather night. The Doctor had a lot of
young ladies staying at his house — grown-up and
growing-up. The masters wanted to show off
before the grown-up ones, and we were in love,
a dozen deep, with the growing-up ones ; and
therefore we determined to give them a literally

HONEST NED. 119

" magnificent display of fireworks." The Doctor
always subscribed like a brick, but that year, in
honour of his guests, he headed the list with a
whacking figure, and we and the under-masters,
of course, followed suit to the best of our ability.
Rockets, Roman candles, flower-pots, maroons,
Jacks-in-the-box, Bengal lights, blue lights, Ca-
therine-wheels, squibs, crackers, serpents, golden
fires, &c., &c., were ordered in such quantities
that the Dulchester shopkeeper of whom we
ordered them thought at first that we were
trying to hoax him. Our bonfire was a regular
wood-stack. We were not all, as I have con-
tritely confessed, as honest as Ned Hargreaves,
and I am afraid that a good many hedges con-
tributed to it without their proprietors' permis-
sion. The Guy on the top of the pile, moreover,
was propped with timber that looked very sus-
piciously like the bars of two gates which Farmer
Lufkin next morning discovered to be missing.
The Guy was a guy. He stood about ten feet

THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

high in his wide-mouthed slouched boots, which
had been made expressly for him by the village
cobbler; and his pockets, his lantern, his hat,
and his long-nosed red face were crammed with
crackers. The girls had kindly helped us to
make his clothes. One of them had sacrificed a
muslin scarf to provide Guido Faux with a ruff;
and another had re-painted his mask, to make
the beard tally exactly with the requirements of
" the period."

Axleford School on that Fifth of November
night was the centre of attraction for five miles
round. A good many people had been invited
to see the show, and a good many more came
without being invited. The village folks soon
got through their few squibs and crackers, and
then, reserving their tar-barrel until our bonfire
should have burnt low, swarmed up en masse to
climb our trees, and perch themselves on our
walls, and to drop from them inside to make raids
on squibs that had fallen near, still fizzing. Even

HONEST NED. 121

Farmer Lufkin, who had no objection to a little
entertainment, once in a way, which cost him
nothing, strolled down to have a look at the fire-
works, little dreaming (since he went away be-
fore the bonfire was lighted) that he had been
laid under contribution towards our fun. That
was a jolly night. The rockets rushed up and
broke, and fell in many-coloured stars to a chorus
of " Oh — oh — oh — law ! " from the yokels.

Boom — fizz — crack — bang — showering sparks
— flash — blaze — omnipresent sulphury smoke —
dark figures, momentarily illuminated, rushing
about and shouting like rollicking revolutionists
— it is pleasant to think that one could ever get
so excited as all of us were that night. And then
we would make sudden dashes into the house,
and have brief, sweet chats with our almost
equally excited Dulcineas, who liked us the
better the grimier our faces and fingers were,
and helped us liberally to the cake and wine
that were going.

122 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

At last our fireworks were exhausted, and the
bonfire was lighted. Broader and broader,
longer and longer, brighter and brighter, the
tongues of flame licked through the wreaths of
smoke. They leaped at Guy like dogs trying to
pull down a deer, but for a time he stood un-
touched, now showing every button, and anon
blotted from view by the rolling smoke-clouds.
Presently, however, his footing gave way ; he
sank into the blazing mass, and his crackers
went off like a fire of musketry. Higher and
higher now shot the flames — the furrows of the
nearest fields could be seen as clearly as on a
summer day, and the windows of the house
flashed ruddy gold from every pane. A servant
galloped from the Hall with the Squire's compli-
ments, " and if the fire was not put out at once,
he should send into Dulchester for the engines."
A howl of triumphant derision greeted that pre-
sumptuous message ; fresh faggots were heaped
upon the fire, and the scared groom went back

HONEST NED. 123

even faster than he had come — thankful that he
had not shared the fate of Guy. Round and
round the fire we capered and shouted like black
fellows. At length the flames were low enough
for us to leap through and over them like black
fellows ; and, watched as we were from the win-
dows, of course we made, or shammed to make,
most heroic jumps. But " all that's bright must
fade," and, close on to midnight, even our unpre-
cedented bonfire had died down into smouldering
ashes. We lingered round them, burying the
potatoes we had provided for a picnic treat before
breakfast on the morrow; but, under-masters'
" Now, then, off to bed " having been too long
disregarded, the Doctor came out and gave the
order in a tone that showed he meant it, and then
off we scampered to our bed-rooms. All except
Old Honesty. His bed was empty when the last
of the other fellows in his bed-room fell asleep,
and it was empty when the first of them awoke.
As the morning went on we began to wonder

124 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

over Ned Hargreaves's mysterious disappearance;
and when breakfast and play-time after it were
over, and we had been rung in for forenoon
school, and Honest Ned was still non inventus,
our speculations became so anxious that we
began to fear that we should be obliged to call
official attention to his absence. " Telling tales,"
however, is such unpleasant work to schoolboys,
that we held our tongues, waiting for the master to
miss him when his class was called up. Of course
he was soon missed then. When the consequent
inquiries were made, nobody could remember
having seen anything of Hargreaves since a little
after tea-time on the previous evening. The
Doctor looked quite troubled when he heard that
Ned could not be found.

" I never knew Hargreaves do anything that he
had reason to be ashamed of," said the Doctor,
as he took down his hat to go to make outside
inquiries after Ned. " Something serious must
have happened to him."

HONEST NED. 125

" No, sir, nothing serious ; and I am ashamed
of myself," was the unexpected answer, as the
school-door swung open, and Old Honesty en-
tered, looking as if he Jiad reason to be ashamed
of himself. His clothes were like a muddy scare-
crow's, and he had a puffed purple-black eye,
whose involuntary wink was comically out of
keeping with the rest of his downcast counte-
nance.

" Why, Hargreaves ! " cried the Doctor in dis-
gusted astonishment

And then, out before us all, Old Honesty told
his story. He had started the evening before to
pull down the finger-post on the common, as an
addition to the bonfire.

"The fellows had been chaffing me because,
they said, I wasn't game enough to get any
wood ; and I thought I 'd show them I was game
enough to do what they wouldn't do, when there
was no harm in it. I didn't think it was stealing
to pull up that lying old thing, sir. It's only

126 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

got ' To A ' on it (the rest of the board 's

broken off), and if that was any guide, it 's got
slewed round and points to nowhere particular,
except the pond. But a Rural came up, and col-
lared me when I was lugging away at the rotten
old post. I got away from him, but a lot of the
yokels came after me, and pulled me about till
the policeman caught hold of me again — and
I Ve been all night in the Cage, sir ! "

The Doctor tried to look stern, but his mouth
twitched, and at last he could not help joining
as heartily as any of us in the burst of laughter
which Ned's forlorn condition and frank con-
fession provoked between them.

And yet even Old Honesty was suspected, for
a time, of being a sneaking thief.

From lockers and boxes our "portable pro-
perty" vanished in a most mysterious fashion.
If a fellow had anything that he was particularly
proud of, he was pretty sure not to have it long.
Even our bird-seed in the stable was walked into

HONEST NED. 127

extensively, and bags of marbles laid down for a
minute or two in the playground had disappeared
when their owners went back to pick them up.
We were sorely puzzled. The thief must be
everywhere — who could it be ? It was almost
impossible to believe that the good-natured
women-servants would prig things out of our
boxes, and, even if they did, what could they
want with blood-alleys and hemp-seed ? The
man-servant and the boy had access to the
stable and the playground and the school-room,
but, though " Old Growler " had amply earned
his name, it was ridiculous to think that he would
rob his growlees ; and the lad who cleaned the
boots and knives was never up in the bed-rooms^
We were obliged to believe that either some in-
visible "Boy Jones" came down the chimneys,
or else that it was one of our own boys that
stole the things.

Well, one night Francis Major went as usual
to his box, to take out a pistol he was very proud

128 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

of — he used to polish it till it was as smooth
and bright as glass, and take aim at the masters'
backs and snap caps at them almost before they
were out of the door. That night, though he
had found the box locked, the pistol was gone.

" I tell you what it is," cried Francis, " I 'm
certain now that it's some fellow belonging to
the school that prigs the things — the paltry
sneak ! It isn't half an hour ago that that pistol
was all right in my box. I took it out and put
it in again when I came up to get my line ou»"
of the box, and none of the servants can have
been up since then. Why, the little chaps were
coming up when T ran down. It must be one of
them. Don't say anything about it. We '11 rout
their boxes out to-morrow."

Great was the consternation amongst the little
chaps when they found that they were suspected.
They gave up their keys willingly enough, how-
ever, next day, and Francis and ever so many
more fellows went up to the little chaps' bed-

HONEST NED. 129

room to overhaul their boxes. The pistol wasn't
in any of them.

" I don't see why you should suspect the little
chaps any more than the big fellows, Francis,"
said Ned Hargreaves. " Let "s all have our boxes
searched."

"Stuff!" cried Peter Robinson, who slept in
Francis and Hargreaves's room. " As if any of
us would do a thing like that ! "

But when the others agreed to have their boxes
searched, Robinson said he was quite agreeable.

" I must go and get my keys, though — I left
them in my locker."

The other fellows waited in the little chaps'
bed-room until Robinson came back, and then
they went up to No. I bed-room.

" There, search my box first," cried Robinson,
as soon as they got inside the door.

Nothing was found in it that didn't belong to
him. Nothing that didn't belong to the owner
was found in any of the boxes until they came

9

130 THE BOYS OF AXLE FORD.

to Hargreaves's ; but there, just under a rumpled
newspaper, lay not only Francis's pistol, but ever
so many more things that had "gone a-missing."
Hargreaves was dumbfoundered ; most of the
other boys looked as if they couldn't believe
their eyes ; but Robinson sneered,

" It 's convenient to be called Old Honesty,
ain't it ? ' The demure sow sucks the cow.' "

I will tell you a little more about Master Peter
Robinson in my next chapter.

p. 130

IX.

PALTRY PETER.

DID you ever spend the holidays at school ?
It sounds dreary, but the fact is not nearly
so dismal as the phrase. At any rate, if I had had
a pleasanter companion, the Midsummer holidays
I once spent at Axleford would have been some
of the pleasantest I remember. And it was not
until the last week that I found out what kind of
fellow my companion was. My pitying classmates
had congratulated me on having such a senior as
Peter Robinson to share what they considered my
exile in Siberia — or Cayenne, I ought rather to
say, considering the weather. " He 's a little bit
too much of a carney," I had been told, " but he

9 — 2

132 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

isn't a bad fellow, and you may be sure he won't
cock over you."

The house and grounds seemed strangely silent
and solitary on the evening of the still more bust-
ling day that succeeded blithe Speech Day. Boys,
masters, and even most of the servants, had started
for their vacation. The good-tempered matron
and two housemaids were the only women left in
the house until the "cleaning" began, and Old
Growler was the only man upon the premises.
It was rather doleful then to ramble about in the
school-room, littered with the rubbish of turned-
out lockers, and the playground, littered with
torn-up exercise and copy-books, and to think of
the home welcomes the rest of the fellows had
got, or were hurrying to, whilst we were " left
lamenting." It was a relief when the yokel-boys
presumed to make an incursion into our deserted
precincts. Although we chased them out again
with vigorous indignation — not succeeding in ex-
pelling them, however, until Old Growler came

PALTRY PETER. 133

to our aid with a horsewhip — we hoped, for the
sake of change, that the saucy rustics would soon
return. We could not help feeling rather low-
spirited at our first lonely meal — taken at the
end of a long room, to which the long forms laid
on their backs upon the long, clothless tables
gave quite an unfamiliar look ; and when we went
to bed, in the midst of a far-stretching wilderness
of stripped mattresses — whose recent incumbents,
scattered like the drops of a trundled mop, would
turn-in dozens and score? of miles away — the
hush of the dim, big old house, and the audible
tick of the far-off clock upon the stairs, were cer-
tainly rather oppressive. We woke jolly enough
the next morning. The world was all before us
where to choose. We were, in fact, our own
masters, so far as the way in which we liked to
amuse ourselves was concerned.

" I trust to your honour, boys, not to get into
mischief," the Doctor had said when he went
away ; and that, though some mean boys do take

134 THE BOYS OF AXLE FORD.

advantage of it, and sillily chuckle over their own
knowingness and the spooniness of their truster,
when they do so — that, I say, seems to me the
best way of keeping boys who have any sense of
honour in them — and most boys have, I hope —
out of serious scrapes. The very fact of our being
nominally at school made us enjoy our almost
unlimited liberty all the mope. The matron and
the other women-folk did not interfere with us in
any way — except to give us specially nice things
to eat and drink, in compassionate consideration
of our temporary homelessness at holiday-time.
When we were guilty of the ordinary schoolboy
tricks, which neither of us thought prohibited by
the Doctor's parting caution, Old Growler fully
availed himself of his power of growling at us ;
but his power of restraint was small, and of that,
even such as it was, being a good old bear at
bottom, he was not disposed to avail himself to
its full extent. He was always threatening —
" Ah, you see if I don't let the master know

PALTRY PETER. 135

when he comes back ; " but it was a long cry to
the Doctor, who was up the Rhine then, and
when he did come back, our offences against Old
Growler's sense of propriety had so accumulated
that he was puzzled to select " a leading case."
Being, as I have said before, not a bad old bear
at bottom, he compromised matters by winking
at all our not very iniquitous iniquities (so far as
he knew) ; letting us understand, however, that
he considered us, so to speak, bound under per-
sonal recognizances to appear for sentence on
past crimes, whenever we offended him next half.
Peter Robinson had a way of smoothing the old
man down that half-flattered and half-angered
him.

" Ah, you can talk, you can, as if butter wouldn't
melt in your mouth, 'cos you 're afeard I should
split, Mr. Robinson," Old Growler would say ;
" I 'd believe ye sooner if you was sarcy like the
young 'un there — though he is a himpident young
limb, as I should like to give a good hidin' to,

136 THE BOYS OF AXLE FORD.

for tramplin' down my beddin'-out plarnts. Bed-
din'-out plarnts, with sich as you to have the run
o' the garding ! The master may be a wise man,
for what I know, with his Greek an' that ; but
he can't know much about boys, though he be a
schoolmaster, to let you two have the run o' the
place."

After the first two or three days, Robinson left
me to amuse myself. He went his way, and I
went mine, only meeting in the bed-room and at
meal-times. Although he was older than I, I
had been a good deal longer at Axleford than he
had. The reason he was staying during the holi-
days was because he had only come to school a few
weeks before the end of the last half. (Private
schools did not talk about "terms" in those days.)
We did not know much about him, therefore, but
the character my classmates had given him seemed
just enough to me at first. He did not cock over
me, and at first he seemed inclined to make me
quite a crony — asking me everything about every-

PALTRY PE TER. 1 37

body belonging to the place. The only thing I
did not like about him was a way he had of look-
ing out of the corners of his eyes when he had
said anything that sounded "queer" — just as if
he was trying dangerous ice, and wanted to see
how far he could go with safety. But when he
saw that I did not like what he was saying, he
chaffed me so for taking him at his word that I
was quite puzzled to make out whether he had
been tempting me to join him in something we
had no business to do, or trying to spy out whether
I had been doing anything of the kind by myself.
Altogether, although it was not until the last
week of the holidays that I had any substantial
reason for thinking him a Paltry Peter, I was
not sorry when Robinson left me to my own
devices.

That was a jolly time, although I had no chum
to roam about with. I could get up when I liked,
go to bed when I liked, wander where I liked,
and stay out as long as I liked. When inclined

138 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

for a day out, the motherly old matron would
supply me with stores — supplemented with multi-
tudinous motherly cautions against breaking my
bones, or getting drowned, shot, trapped, and a
long &c. of serious contingencies ; and if too late
for dinner, I had only to go into the kitchen to
get a better meal than I should have had if I had
been true to time. Old Growler used, of course,
when he was in the way, to protest vigorously
against these kitchen indulgences. "A boy's belly
should tell him when it 's time for dinner," was
his elegant phrase; " an' if it don't, he don't want
none, or don't ought to have none — that 's what
/ says." But old Growler, as well as myself, was
dependent on the kitchen for creature-comforts,
and had to retreat growling like a distantly
rumbling thunderstorm before the "You ought
to be ashamed of yourself" and " Yote. like to
have enough, you greedy, grumpy old pig," &c.,
&c. of the good-natured dispensers of mine. The
country was basking in the lazy pomp of full-

PALTRY PETER. 139

blown, glorious summer. In the early morning it
was like dipping one's head into iced millefleur to
open a bed-room window. All day long the air
was luscious with the scent of limes. Week after
week passed by without a drop of rain, except
a freshening, dust-laying night-shower now and
then, and once, when the cracks in the clay lands
seemed gasping for breath, a grand tempest that
would have seemed a dream next sunny morning,
had it not been for the rain-drops trembling on
the hedge-sprays, the rain-pools in the lanes, the
sodden flower-petals lying, earth-splashed, on the
garden-beds, and the revivified look of the whole
country round. The shorn meadows, although
they had taken a start for an aftermath, soon
turned yellow again. Streaks and patches of gold
grew more and more plentiful in the rustling
green corn-fields. The spiny green globes of the
chestnut trees seemed to swell before one's eyes.
Summer fruit might be had for the plucking, and
the school and the farm and the cottage gardens

140 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

were rich in promise of green and brown pears
and rosy-cheeked and russet apples. Here and
there on the hedges an already purple pimple
might be picked off the granulated beehives of
the plenteous show of blackberries. Lacelike hem-
lock-blossom, towering stinging-nettles, honeyed
white nettles, and glossy dock-leaves choked the
ditches. The flowerless primroses sprawled droop-
ing, crinkled leaves, as big as lettuce-leaves, over
the hedge-banks, and the hedges were white
with a mat of bell-bind, and purple with hanging
clusters of nightshade. The woods were darken-
ing, but green was still the dominant tone of
their sun-gilt tufted fur-like clumps and roundly
rising inclined planes — green that gleamed out
like a bridesmaid standing beside a widower when
a young plane-tree stood beside a copper beech.
And around the trees, though bare just at their
base, the elsewhere shrivelled grass grew lush
damascened with blue and pink and yellow wild
flowers, and spired with rusty sorrel. The birds

PALTRY PETER. 141

were growing lazy, but larks still sang all day
long, and nightingales all night long, and fitfully
by day. Now and then, too, a blackbird would
say grace for the fruit on which he had been
gorging himself, in a brief snatch of the cooling
music he had fluted out far more generously
before the fruit was ripe for his greedy golden
bill — ever and anon crisping the sweetness of his
song with a roughness like that of the sweet-sour,
cooling black currant The farmers winked at
my popping away at the rabbits with the old
gun I had borrowed in the village, and winked
very good-humouredly too, when the Squire's
gamekeeper was not likely to turn-up, though
rabbits were reserved with game in their leases ;
for the swarming vermin had nibbled some of
the fields bare for a couple of " stetches " and
more from the hedges that bordered the green
woodland lanes.

" Yow mustn't shoot at them rabbuts, ye know,
young master," Farmer Walton said to me one

142 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

«»

day with a grin. " Squire '11 have ye took up for
poachin', though ye are a Latin scholard as ought
to know better. I guess though, yow don't hit
many, s' long as ye aim at 'em. Theer, I '11 give
ye leave to fire off that gun o' yourn, an* scare
'em. Theer 's no law agin that, as I knows on.
It 's cruel, it is, the way them nasty beasts eats
down my earn and turmets. Tain't as if th' old
Squire went shootin' hisself, or made it up to ye
somehow ; but he lets his shootin', he do, though
he is sich a old county gen'leman, to a Lunnon
chap as keeps a gin-shop, I Ve heard — anyhow,
he 's summut in the spirit line. He comes down,
an' he blazes away — him an' his mates, they does.
That 's all fair enough when the gin feller pays
for his fun, an' I don't expect he gits much out
of it, for thim cockneys ain't much o' shots, an'
the Squire 's a precious screw, he be. I wouldn't
grumble if 't was made up to me somehow,
though it be uncommon aggrawatin* to see fields
that you Ve paid money for to be ploughed, an'

PALTRY PETER. 143

sowed, an' harrered, an' rolled, as bare as your
chin, almost, young master, when the years ought
to be up over yer yead. The Squire, he never
makes it up, he don't. If I was to grumble, he 'd
say, ' Your lease is out next Michaelmas, an' you
can walk, you can/ The gin feller 's generouser
than the Squire, though he be a Lunnoner. He
sends me a dozen or two o' wine, or a cask o'
stout, or that like ; but what 's that to the
vally o' my crops thim brutes has spoiled ? The
rabbuts is the wust. The hares is bad, but I
wouldn't growl about them, an' I wouldn't say a
word about the pa'tridges, if it wasn't for them
[condemned] warmin. The Lunnoner gives me
a brace or two o' birds, he do. He ain't over
free-handed, but he's better than Squire. He
wants to git the vally o' his money, though he
don't, an' that's all right enough. But I pay
money to Squire 's well as he, an' I should like
to git the vally on it too. Well, anyhow, yow Ve
scared 'em," Farmer Walton added, when, thus

144 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

encouraged, I had pulled the trigger. "But,
law bless ye, they'll be back agin, thick 's flies
— thick 's fleas — in two minnuts. I 'm goin'
home'ards ; if yow like to come up, an' have a
glass o' beer, yow can."

Besides the rabbit-haunted fields to wander
over, there was the little river to bathe, and
boat, and fish in. I could take my pick of the
miller's boats for a smaller price than I should
have had to pay for his leakiest old tub during
the half. When the miller's wife, indeed, chanced
to be the letter, she let me have the boat for
nothing. " It 's a shame, that it is," she would
say, "whoever your father, or your mother, or
your aunts or uncles is, that they should leave a
child o' theirn at school when the rest is a-enjyin'
theirselves at home. Theer — you go an' enjy
yourself; I 'm not a-going to take your money,
don't you think it — -you, as don't seem to have a
home as anybody '11 arsk you to. I am a mother
myself, / am. Theer — if you '11 promise not to

PALTRY PETER. 145

be up to any o' your tricks, you shall give my
Jemimar Ann a pull, you shall."

Jemima Ann was a very pretty little damsel,
with a crop of golden-brown curls that hung
down like tumbled spaniel's ears, and big, dark-
and long-lashed eyes, as liquidly and lucently
blue as the July sky overhead. She was just
my own age, and therefore, of course, considered
herself about fifteen years my elder ; making de
Jiaut en bas remarks on my rowing, age, stature,
strength, and character generally, which rendered
her company a somewhat marmaladish sweet. On
rare occasions, however, Jemima Ann would come
down from her lofty perch of assumed seniority
and condescend to treat me as a contemporary.
It was heavenly then to glide along the narrow,
winding, insect-dimpled reaches, with the golden
dust-like gnat swarms humming over the reeds,
and the kingfisher, and the swallows, and the
dragon-flies zigzagging backwards and forwards,

and here and there a grave old cow standing

10

146 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

under the willows, up to her knees in weeds and
water, lashing her sides with her tufted tail, and
watching Jemima Ann with an " I Ve-a-great-
mind-to-tell-your-mother-miss" expression. What
the cows saw to make them look in that way,
you must not expect me to inform you. Those
are fools who kiss and tell.

That summer, too, the fish bit as if they were
weary of their existence. My green and white
float began to bob as soon as the line was thrown
in. Gudgeons, and perch, and popes, bullheads,
and loach, and roach, I pulled up as if all the
fish in the little river wanted to get out of its
lukewarm water. One day, when I hadn't my
rod with me, I saw quite a whopping carp close
in by the bank. Well, he waited for me to bend
a pin, and tie it on to a top-string, and then he
let me lower it, with a bit of currant dumpling
on for bait, right down before his nose ; and then
he quietly opened his mouth and took the hook,
and in two seconds I had him flapping on the

PALTRY PETER. 147

bank. I caught shy Dr. Tench, too, who goes
about curing the other fish when they are ill, or
when they have got a hook sticking in them,
according to the country people.

I was able to get on very well, although Robin-
son did leave me to myself, you see. Meantime
he pottered about by himself, not often going
outside the grounds, so far as I could make out.
And now for what made me suspect him to be a
sneak.

One evening, when the place was being got
into order for the boys' coming back, I ran into
the school-room that had just been scrubbed,
to get something out of my locker. From the
door to one desk, on both sides of it, and back
again, there was a chain of marks on the damp
floor. At first I thought they were a dog's foot-
prints, but when I looked at them more closely,
I saw that they had been made by somebody
who wore boots or shoes, walking on tiptoe.

There was yellow clay sticking here and there

10- 2

J48 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

in these x toe-marks, and a little heap of it was
lying under the school-room scraper. There
wasn't much in that. Of course, I guessed that
Robinson had gone into the school-room before
me, and had taken more pains not to dirty the
clean floor than I had done in my hurry. At
the same time I could not make out why he
should have been pottering about those lockers,
when his was quite on the other side of the
school-room. When I went into the house to
supper, Robinson was lying, with his boots off,
on a form.

" Have you been in the school-room ?" I asked.

" No," he answered, yawning, " I haven't. I 've
just come back from Dulchester, and I 'm as tired
as a dog. Good night — I 'm off to bed."

And off he went, leaving his boots behind
him. I took them up, and though they had been
scraped, the same kind of clay that I had seen
in the school-room was sticking to the soles.
I took them across to the school-room, and the

PALTRY PETER.

149

toes just fitted into the marks. Robinson had
plainly told me a lie, but what could be his
motive ? What harm was there in going into the
school-room ? Though the lockers he had gone
to were a good way from his own, he couldn't
think that I should fancy he had been prigging
anything ; for all the lockers were empty. They
had all been left unlocked, and one of my amuse-
ments had been to make a cannonade in the
echoing school-room by banging the lids up and
down. I put my hand on one to repeat the
performance, but found to my astonishment that
it was locked. I was still more astonished when
next day I found that it was unlocked again.
When I told Robinson about it, he gave me a
queer look, and said, "Oh, you must have
jammed it in your banging it about, and then
you gave a good pull and got it loose again."

This explanation did not satisfy me, however.
I could not help suspecting that there was some-
thing queer in Master Peter besides his looks.

150 THE BOYS OF AXLE FORD.

Well, the next half came, and we lost our
things right and left, as I told you in my last
chapter. What I had noticed during the holi-
days made me half fancy now and then that
Robinson might know something about the way
in which they went ; but still I could not believe
that any of our fellows would be paltry enough
to be a common prig, and so I held my tongue.
When Ned Hargreaves, however, got to be sus-
pected, and Robinson crowed over him, I felt
sure that Robinson must be the thief, and told
some of the big fellows what I had noticed. They
thought it looked suspicious, too, and though
they could not bring anything home to Robin-
son, they grew shy of his company, and at the
same time watched him sharply. After the dis-
covery of the cache of stolen goods in Ned Har-
greaves's box, nothing else was stolen. A few
fellows joined with Robinson in saying that the
thief had been found out at last ; but most said
Yes, he had, they thought, — in a very different

PALTRY PETER. 151

sense. " Don't you mind, Ned — the sneak that
could take the things out of our boxes could put
them into yours," was the consolation very gene-
rally given to Hargreaves; but Honest Ned could
not be happy so long as the slightest ground of
suspicion remained against him, and the prima.
facie look of the affair was certainly " nasty "
enough to necessitate some charity on the part
of his defenders. If the things had been found
in anybody else's box, lie would certainly have
been suspected of stealing them ; but it seemed
so preposterous to think that Hargreaves could
be a prig that most of us pooh-poohed the evi-
dence against him.

Honest Ned had to thank the Doctor's monkey
for the vindication of his character, and Paltry
Peter had to thank it for his detection. One day
in the playground Jacko came leaping and jab-
bering towards a knot of us, with Robinson rush-
ing after him — looking pale with fright. Jacko
was jangling something in his paws. It was a

T52 THE BOYS OF AXLE FORD.

huge bunch of keys which Robinson had pulled
out of his pocket with his handkerchief. Robin-
son tried hard to be the first to grab the keys,
but Francis Major got them.

" They 're mine," shouted Robinson.

" What a lot of boxes you must have — where
do you keep them?" sneered Francis. "Why
this key, I do believe, would fit my box — I '11 go
and try."

And up into the bed-rooms he ran, with ever
so many of us after him. There were not many
boxes that one or other of Robinson's keys would
not fit, we found, and ditto as to the lockers.

" I — I — I — never used 'em — they ain't mine —
I picked 'em up five ztiinutes ago," stammered
Paltry Peter, when we surrounded him after our
trial of his keys. Of course, we should not have
believed him if he had gone on stammering for
a twelvemonth ; but, curiously enough, just then
an old man pulled up his pony-cart in the lane,
and came hobbling into the playground.

PALTRY PETER. 153

"Where's the young gen'leman as has the
fancy for old keys ? " said the old man. — " Ah,
there he be," he went on, limping up to Robin-
son. " I was tellin' a neighbour o' mine how I 'd
let ye have my old keys to pick from, an', says
he, 'You'll get into trouble — what does the young
gen'leman want ycm for?' So, as I was a-passin'
in my cart, I thought I 'd jist drop in to make sure
as all was square."

The old man was a Dulchester dealer in marine
stores, of whom Robinson had bought his bunch
during the holidays, availing himself of the op-
portunity which they afforded to fit almost every
empty locker and school-box with a key. Robin-
son, however, flatly denied that he had ever seen
the old man before, and still maintained that he
had picked up the keys that very morning.

" Why don't you suspect Camden ?" he asked.
" It 's him the old man must mean. He stayed
the holidays as well as me, and he was always
sneaking about the place like a cat."

154 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

" That 's a lie, Mr. Robinson, and you knows
it," said Old Growler, who had come up to see
what the hubbub was about. " The young 'un 's
a mischeevious young limb, but it 's you as was
allus sneakin' about. I wish I 'd known what you
was arter. Anyhow, the master shall know your
goins on now."

Old Growler made his report to the Doctor,
and the issue of the whole matter was that Paltry
Peter was expelled.

X.

JOLLY JIM.

JAMES CRISP does not sound a very jolly
name — rather the other thing ; but James
Crisp was such a jolly fellow that everybody at
Axleford liked him. I do not know that there is
any particular merit in being jolly. Jolly folks
seem to me to be born jolly, but it is a very jolly
thing to be born jolly.

Jolly Jim, as I have said, was a favourite with
everybody — masters, and servants, and village
people, as well as boys, although, so far as I
remember, he did not trouble himself much to
win their favour. He was ready enough to do
kind things, but not more so than a good many

156 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

fellows who were not half such favourites as he
was. But Jim had always a merry look and a
merry word for everybody, and so everybody
had a kind look and word for him. He was not
a remarkably witty fellow, and yet, whatever
Jie said, people were sure to laugh. Even Old
Growler had a grin for Jolly Jim, and the women
folk made such a pet of him that we should have
been very jealous, if we had not made such a pet
of him too. He was a very useful pet, because,
whenever we happened to put the Doctor out a
little, Jolly Jim could always talk and laugh
him round again.

But at last another king arose in Axleford,
who was a bear to all of us, but made himself a
special beast to Jolly Jim. The Doctor was
taken ill, and had to go away to the south of
France for nearly the whole of a half; and whilst
he was away, a Mr. Buntingford reigned in his
stead. Some naughty people say that when
ministers take a holiday, they always engage the

JOLLY JIM. 157

greatest sticks that they can find to preach for
them during their absence, in order that their
congregations may make all the more of them
when they come back. Of course I don't believe
that, or suppose that the Doctor had any such
motive ; but, if he had, he could not have picked
out a better beast than Buntingford to make us
long to see him at his desk again. Buntingford
was almost the exact opposite of the Doctor in
everything. He couldn't do anything with his
hands, and mathematics was the only thing he
really knew anything about. We soon found out
that he had a lot of keys for exercises, and cribs.
Before he called up a Latin or Greek class, we
could see him with his head down under his
desk-lid, trying to make out the construing — and
a nice boggle he made of it after all. After a
bit, we used to try off the wildest translations on
him — almost as bad as the famous one that every
schoolboy has heard of : Semiramis condidit
Babyloniam coctilibus muris — "Semiramis built

158 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

Babylon with cocktailed mice." And yet he was
so conceited that he sneered at the under-masters
when we gave the quite correct construings that
they had given us. Of course, we could not help
seeing that he did understand mathematics — a
good deal too well for our liking. For one thing
we did not relish being for ever dosed with ma-
thematics, and, for another, we grudged having
to own that Buntingford knew anything about
anything. He was as fond of cutting our play-
time short as the Doctor had been of stretching
it out. He never played with us, or joked with
us, or took any interest, except a spitefully spy-
ing tyrant's, in anything we did out of school.

I have said that he could not do anything with
his hands, but I should have added that it was
literally " a caution," as the Yankees say, to see
(and still more to feel) him flog a fellow or box
a fellow's ears. We wanted to be able to think
Buntingford a milksop, because he never did any-
thing that we thought manly ; but we could not

JOLLY JIM. 159

exactly manage that He was such a sturdy,
broad-shouldered little beast, and he did not
seem a bit afraid of the hatred with which he
was daily more and more regarded by everybody
at Axleford, except the writing-master. At first,
the drill-sergeant also had a faint liking for Bunt-
ingford — he received so willingly and responded
so eagerly to the sergeant's reports for punish-
ment. But one day the sergeant saw Buntingford
knock the head of a little boy who had been re-
ported backwards and forwards with clenched
fists, and then the sergeant looked very much
inclined to knock down the knocker.

Until the Doctor returned, the sergeant never
gave in another report. He seemed to be almost
as anxious for the Doctor's return as we were,
although he was good enough to say — after the
little incident referred to —

" Well, gentlemen, ye ain't nigh so troublesome
as ye used to be. If ye 'd always behave like this,
I wouldn't report ye to nobody, let alone that — "

i6o THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

The sergeant's sense of discipline prevented
him from finishing his sentence, but we tho-
roughly understood how he wished to characterize
Buntingford ; and even the grumpy sergeant was
thenceforward quoted at a premium in Axleford.

Buntingford was tolerably impartial in letting
us see that he hated us all to a very considerable
extent ; but his concentrated hatred was reserved
for Jolly Jim. Buntingford's excuse was that
Jim, although a big fellow, was not yet out of
the first book of Euclid. He had tilted at "the
windmill," and had been foiled. When put
back to the First Proposition, he had vaguely
remembered that, chiefly in consequence of the
intersecting circles' resemblance to patten-marks,
but everything beyond had seemed virgin ground
to him, and again and again he had slid back
ignominiously on the hither side of the Pons
Asinorum.

" I could understand it somehow with the
Doctor," Jim used to say. "If I couldn't say it

JOLLY JIM. 161

all, I could make it out when he was showing
me what I ought to have said, though I couldn't
remember anything about it five minutes after-
wards. But Grisly gets into such a rage if you
haven't got all those spider's-web things at your
finger's ends that he 'd drive it out of your head
if you did know it. What 's the odds, though, so
long as you 're happy ?"

Jolly Jim's marked inaptitude for geometrical
demonstration, no doubt, had something to do
with the marked dislike with which Grisly re-
garded him ; but Jim's sunny disposition, and
the favour which it won for him from every one
except Grisly, had more. At school-time, at
meal-times, in the bed-rooms, in the playground,
and even in church, Buntingford was always try-
ing to make Jolly Jim look small. That he was
an idiotic dunce, and that we were very little
better for thinking so much of him, was the
opinion which Buntingford seemed to want to

drive into us all.

11

1 62 THE BOYS OF AXLE FORD.

He did not succeed. We liked Jim the better
for the persecution he underwent. He was so
everlastingly kept in, that at last the under-
masters used to scowl openly, and bang down
their desk-lids, when he got a fresh imposition ;
and the housekeeper used to come over to com-
fort him, and did not scruple to declare, in Bun-
tingford's hearing, that " it was a shame, that it
was, and she 'd write to the master and the missis.
She wasn't a-going to see a fine young gentleman
have his health took away like that." The ser-
vants all snarled and snapped at Buntingford,
and the village boys shouted "Grisly" after him,
when he happened to be out after dusk.

If the other masters had backed Buntingford,
I think there would have been a mutiny; but,
as we could see that they hated Buntingford
almost as much as we did, the half's work some-
how jolted on. We paid the under-masters, in-
deed, exceptional deference, to make Buntingford
savage. And more and more savage he grew.

JOLLY JIM 163

His cane was always going like a flail. How we
did long for the Doctor to come back ! Almost
the only sweet-tempered person that still slept
under the roof of the school-house was Jolly
Jim. " What 's the odds so long as you 're
happy?" he still kept on asking, until we got
almost angry even with him. It seemed mean
in him somehow to be happy — badgered as he
was. Buntingford used to look at Jim as if he
would uncommonly like to lay the cane about
his shoulders ; but, barring the incapacity for ma-
thematics, there was really no scholastic charge
to bring against Jim, and Buntingford, in spite
of his sturdy swagger, was, like most tyrants, a
bit of a coward at heart, and therefore chary of
flogging the big fellows.

He discovered, however, that amongst the little
fellows there was one whom Jolly Jim "knew
at home," and had promised to take care of at
school. " Shrimp," as we called this urchin, was

an ailing little fellow, who did neither harm nor

11 — 2

1 64 THE BOYS OF AXLE FORD.

good. Scarcely any one, except Jim and the
housekeeper, took any notice of him, until Bun-
tingford found him out and began to bully him
abominably. As long as the bullying was con-
fined to "jawings," "impositions," and "keep-
ings-in," Jolly Jim contented himself with trying
to comfort his little proteg6 with his " What 's
the odds ?" formula, adding, " It 's a jolly shame,
but Christmas is coming, and Grisly won't be
here next half." As Shrimp was not happy, he
found considerable odds between his previous
blissful obscurity and the disagreeable notoriety
into which Buntingford had brought him. He
did his best, however, to look comforted, and
even enjoyed after a fashion the extra petting
which the persecuted patron, for whose sake he
was persecuted, gave him.

But one afternoon, in the beginning of De-
cember, Grisly was in a towering rage. The
servants had been saucy to him, and the woman
at the post-office had given him what she called

JOLLY JIM. 165

a "comfortable bit of her mind." He came back
from the village, and had us at once rung into
school, although there was still at least a quarter
of an hour of play due to us. He took out his
cane and rapped his desk with it in terrorem,
and called up Shrimp's class. He was going to
examine it, he said — he kept his boys up to the
mark, and he would see that the other masters
did not neglect tJieir duty. I forget what it was
he examined the class in, but I remember dis-
tinctly that, for something some other boy had
said, he told Shrimp to hold out his hand.

"Don't!" shouted Jolly Jim, starting up, and
looking very unlike his jolly self.

"Crisp, sit down," said the master nearest him.
" You can do no good — you '11 only make it
worse," the usher added, in a kindly whisper.

But poor little Shrimp Jiad held out his hand,
and was howling under the savage cut he had
got from Grisly 's cane.

" Hold your hand out again," growled Grisly,

166 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

and Shrimp, fearing both to obey and to disobey,
was dodging his poor little rawly-puffed, bleeding
palm backwards and forwards, when Jolly Jim
rushed in to the rescue.

" Mr. Buntingford," he said, " I can't make out
why you don't like me, but if you want to take
it out of me, take it out of me! and not of a poor
sick little chap like that, you coward !"

As he spoke, Grisly cut at him. Jolly Jim
was not as patient as his words might have
seemed to promise, when he felt the cane. He
rushed at Grisly, and for a minute or two there
was a rough-and-tumble fight. Grisly got Jim
down, and lashed, him like a slave-driver, but we
had the satisfaction of seeing that previously
Grisly's face had received very undignified da-
mage. It had all happened so suddenly that
there had not been time for any one to interfere
on the one side or the other. The under-masters,
of course, were scandalized at such a flagrant
breach of discipline, and glanced anxiously at

JOLLY JIM, !67

the forms that were heaving like waves tossing
themselves up into a storm ; and yet they did
not look at all vexed to see Grisly trembling
like a leaf, as pale as a sheet, and dabbing his
sodden-red pocket-handkerchief on his still-pour-
ing nose.

" Mr. Valpy," he said, as soon as he could gasp
out any words, to the head usher, " take my desk
till I come back. Mr. Scott-Liddell," to the se-
cond usher, " take Crisp to the Green Room, and
lock him in until he is expelled."

" What 's the odds so long as you 're happy ? "
said Jolly Jim, as he followed half-sympathetic,
half-nervous Mr. Scott-Liddell, meanwhile glanc-
ing with great satisfaction at the shirt-front of
his castigator, which seemed to be suffering
from a severe attack of measles.

"Don't be afraid, Shrimp," shouted Jim, as
he went out at the swing-door. " He won't hit
you again for nothing."

If Shrimp had been hit again for something,

168 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

he would have found plenty of champions when
Grisly came back in a clean shirt and swollen
nose. But Shrimp was not hit for anything.
Grisly tried hard to look as if nothing had hap-
pened. Not succeeding, he let us out of school
about half an hour before our time.

The key of the Green Room was duly turned
on Jolly Jim, still repeating his favourite for-
mula ; but it was soon — must I say unduly ? —
turned again by the housekeeper. Jolly Jim
started on foot for Dulchester, and thence pre-
maturely took coach for home. We had no
breaking-up party that half. As soon as the
examination was over, Grisly vanished with his
beastly problem-papers, and we saw him no
more. Next half brought back our dear old
Doctor; and it also brought back Jolly Jim.
Of course the Doctor lectured him, but, as Jolly
Jim observed, "What's the odds, Shrimp, so
long as you 're happy ?"

XI.

TRUANT JACK.

ALL the time I was at Axleford not more
than two boys, I think, ran away from
school. One of these runaways was little Jack
Sprat, as we used to call him — a nice little fellow,
but he could not bear anything like confinement,
and he was mad to go to sea.

Jack's notion was that all sailors were jolly
fellows, who led very jolly lives. They might
have dangers to encounter, but if they were
wrecked, they were almost sure to get back to
England somehow, or, if they didn't, to have
beautiful desert islands waiting for them, which
was even better. And then their life was so un-

170 THE BOYS OF AXLE FORD.

like school — so free and easy. There were such
cJwnces in it, too. You might begin as cabin-boy
in a merchantman (hadn't Captain Cook, and
Sir Cloudesly Shovel, and ever so many of the
famous fellows, been cabin-boys either in the
merchant service or the navy ?), but then you
might be the first of a crew of twenty gallant
British tars to board a pirate, and haul down the
black flag with its death's head and cross-bones,
the said pirate being manned by three hundred
bearded ruffians, black, brown, and renegade-
white, and carrying thirty long brass guns, which
your ship had fought for five hours, muzzle to
muzzle, with a rusty little bit of an iron cannon,
suddenly remembered and dragged out from
under the long-boat ; and then, before you could
say "Jack Robinson," you might find yourself
cadet, — midshipman, — first lieutenant, — captain
of a dashing frigate, sink or capture two French
first-rates and half a dozen corvettes in single
combat, and take no end of American clippers.

TRUANT JACK. 17 x

How the Portsmouth bells would ring when it
was known that the "'flying, fighting Arethusa"
had anchored at Spithead with a kite-tail of fresh
prizes under her stern ! The mayor and corpo-
ration would come down to welcome her heroic
young captain, when he landed, for the first time
during his brief but eventful life at sea, upon his
native soil. Mamma would not be sorry then that
he had run away from school ; and wouldn't " the
girls" — sisters, and cousins, and all the rest of
them that you used to lark with under the mis-
tletoe— envy the one that had hold of your sound
arm (one arm, of course, would be in a sling, but
sure to get quite well the week after next), when
you walked to church the first Sunday after you
got home, in your cocked hat, and blue coat, and
white trousers, and with your gold epaulettes,
and sword (hacked like a saw), and a baker's
dozen of medals on ?

Jack was a great chum of mine, and he gravely
assured me that having to sit still in a school-

172 THE BOYS OF AXLE FORD.

room made the blood rush to his head. Accord-
ingly, to secure liberty, the sagacious Jack made
up his mind to turn cabin-boy.

He told me all his adventures afterwards, and
so I can tell them to you just as if I had run
away with him.

The eventful morning came at length, and Jack
woke early in the autumn moonlight. All the
other fellows in the long dormitory were sound
asleep. He felt rather scared, but as he was, he
said his prayers before he crept out of the room.
Perhaps he hurried them over rather, and per-
haps he did not feel quite sure that boys who
were running away had any business to say
prayers ; but still he did say them, partly from
habit, and partly because he felt that people who
were going to sea could not make sure for a
moment what would happen to them. Then he
went out of the room on tiptoe, carrying the
shoes which he had smuggled up to bed the night
before, instead of pushing them into his pigeon-

TRUANT JACK. 173

hole in the shoe-rack to be cleaned; and stole
almost as silently as a shadow down the stairs.
Boards would creak, though, when he was pass-
ing the bed-room doors he dreaded most; and
he had to make a rush past the tall old clock on
the last landing. " Tick-tick, tick-tick," it said ;
"/'m awake — I 've been awake all night, /know
what 's going on, if every one else is asleep."

In the hall Jack put on his shoes, and prepared
to tackle the front door. There were two bolts
to shoot back, and a bar to take down, and a chain
to unsnack, and then a huge key to turn. Jack
almost tumbled off the tottering scaffolding of
hall-chairs, &c. he constructed to reach the top
bolt ; but all the obstacles except the lock were
overcome at last. The key for a time would
only give a grating creak that made Jack shiver
— it obstinately refused to turn. With a wrench
that almost put his wrists out of joint, Jack twisted
it round. A moment afterwards he had lifted
the latch, and was running down to the great

174 THE BOYS OF AXLE FORD,

gates, leaping over the shadows of the trees that
stretched out gaunt black arms, as if they wanted
to trip him up or catch him by the ankle. Jack
had expected that he would have to clamber over
the great gates, but — hooray ! — the little door in
one of them had been left unlocked, and was idly
swinging backwards and forwards in the breeze.
Jack had time to turn round and shake his fist
at the rusty old bell that wouldn't ring him up
to work before breakfast ; and then he plunged
into the outside moonlight, and felt free, although
he still ran on.

Jack did not go into Dulchester, but struck
across country into the London road. For some
time he had been saving up his pocket-money,
and selling off his property, in a way that seemed
very mysterious to me, as I did not know the
reason. Perhaps he had just about money enough
to pay his fare to London by coach, but he did
not venture to ask any of the coachmen who
passed him to take him, thinking that when they

TRUANT JACK. . 175

got him to London they would lock him up, and
then bring him back next day, bound hand and
foot, to Axleford. Part of the way to London
he walked, and part he rode in farmers' waggons
and carriers' carts, and fish-machines. Some-
times he had to stand pots of beer in return for
his rides. Whilst he was tramping, a brickdust-
faced young woman-tramp who met him collared
him, and helped herself to a considerable per-
centage of his cash, laughing most disrespectfully
when she found the table-knife which Jack had
slipped up his jacket-sleeve — dagger-wise — for
his protection against robbers, and helping her-
self to that, too. He was obliged to buy some-
thing to eat and drink upon the road, and, ac-
cordingly, had very little left in his pocket when
he was put down in Mile End early in the morn-
ing after that on which he had left Axleford. Jack
thought, however, that all he had to do was to
get to " the Docks," but it was a good while be-
fore he could find his way to the Docks. When

1 76 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

he asked his way to them, people said, " What
docks, you young silly ? " and others told him to
go to such-a-street, and turn down such-another-
street, and anybody would tell him there; but
Jack didn't know where such-a-street and such-
another-street were, any more than he knew
where the Docks were.

When he reached Ratcliff Highway at last,
and threaded his way through the throng of
greasy, ragged, unshaven labourers still waiting
to be hired outside the gates, the London Docks
were in full swing of business. The bustle pleased
Jack at first. Men were hewing sugar-hogsheads
open with great axes, white coopers were ham-
mering away at casks, blue custom-house officers
were gauging casks, men were trundling casks,
casks in thousands stood along the quays. Dan-
gling from top floors of the tall warehouses, and
over the mine-like holds of the ships, boxes, bar-
rels, crates, bales, hogsheads, and huge bundles
of hides and sheepskins, and skeins of jangling

TRUANT JACK. 177

iron bars, were everywhere gomg up or down.
Tea-chests were being shot into lighters, like
boys sliding down a hill. There was a smell, too,
here of sugar, there of tobacco, and yonder of
vinegar, or drugs, or brandy — and everywhere of
tar — that somehow sharpened Jack's desire to be
a sailor. But he soon felt half disappointed ;
nobody in the Docks looked jolly. The men
who were crying "Heave — heave — heave alto-
gether ! " as they strained at the winches, looked
far more like depressed dustmen than dashing
mariners. Even the real sailors had nothing
rollicking about them. They hadn't broad turn-
over collars to their shirts, low-waisted breeches,
and long-quartered pumps. Some of them had
their trousers braced up almost to their armpits,
and — worse still — instead of hailing him with a
"What cheer, messmate?" some of them gave
Jack a shove, and swore at him, if he happened
to stumble against them, as he caught his foot in

the great iron mooring-rings, or groped his way

12

178 THE BOYS OF AXLE FORD.

under and over the gangways, chains, and haw-
sers that everywhere blocked the path. Some of
the mates, to be sure, had gilt bands round their
caps, and gilt buttons on their blue coats, but the
greasy, white-seamed uniforms had a very shabby-
genteel look, and Jack did not like to see sailors
quill-driving at the little tables at which the car-
goes were being checked off.

However, there were the ships, at any rate,
some of them with bunting flying, or a loose sail
bellying out, or sailors' clothes hung up to dry —
real big ships from all parts of the world. When
Jack thought of the pure sea to which they
were accustomed, he wondered that they did not
fidget in the stagnant, muddy-green dock-water.
But some of the ships did not smell very sweet ;
unpleasant whiffs came from them of bilge-water,
perspiring sheepskins, and putrid horns and hides.

" But I needn't go in a ship that carries nasty
things like those," thought Jack ; " I Ve plenty
to pick from."

TRUANT JACK. 179

He made up his mind, for one thing, that he
wouldn't go in a steamer, or in a blistered, rusty,
old-fashioned sailing tub, with a bow as broad as
its stern, and its grey, ragged rigging all in a
tangle. At last he found a craft just to his taste,
with a clipper bow, and raking masts, and gilt
stars on the catheads, and bright brass belaying
pins, and deck as white as milk, and ropes coiled
down on it like Catherine- wheels. A placard lashed
on to her shrouds announced that she was bound
for Hong Kong, and " the East " was just where
Jack wanted to go to. So he went up to some
men who were swinging on a stage, painting the
clipper's sides, and said, as knowingly as he could,

" Can you tell me if this ship is in want of a
hand ? "

" Can't say, sir," answered one of the men with
a grin ; " better ask the mate. There he stands
by the gangway."

" If you please, sir, I want to go to sea," said
Jack to the mate, very respectfully.

12- 2

i8o THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

" Do you ? Go back home, you little fool."

Ship after ship he tried with no better success,
and what that mate said was quite polite com-
pared with the answers Jack got from some of
the mates and captains. Where there were men
on board, too, they made fun of him ; told him
that they had got a monkey already, and dis-
agreeable things of that kind ; and one sulky old
black cook dabbed a dirty dishclout into his face,
and threatened to send a bucket of water over
him, if he didn't make tracks tarnation slick out
of his galley. Jack did not try an American ship
again after that.

Presently, however, a red-faced man came reel-
ing down to a boat that was waiting to pull him
to a ship which was being warped out of dock.
He overheard Jack speaking to a captain, and
sang out,

" Want to go to sea, eh ? Come along wi' me ;
I want a boy, an' one 's as good as another."

Jack did not much like the look of the man,

TRUANT JACK.

but he was ashamed to hold back. He scrambled
down into the boat, and presently was scrambling
up the side of the Onyx, 960 tons, bound for Port
Natal. The Onyx was not A I, and she didn't
carry " a cow and an experienced surgeon." As
soon as the captain got on board, he tumbled
into his cabin to sleep off his drink. Jack enjoyed
the bustle of the river as they were being towed
down to Gravesend, but felt rather uncomfortable
because no one gave him anything to do.

"If you please, sir, I Ve come on board to
work," he said to the second mate.

" Oh, have you ? Where did you sign articles ?
I thought you was the skipper's kid. Don't dis-
tress yourself, lie '11 find you plenty to do; we've
none too many hands on board. Make yourself
happy whilst you can ; it's a poor soul that never
rejoices."

This was the nearest approach to his idea of
sailors' talk which Jack had heard, and his heart
warmed accordingly to Mr. Croggan. When the

1 82 THE BOYS OF AXLE FORD.

Onyx brought up for the night at Gravesend, he
asked Mr. Croggan where he was to turn in —
Jack was just going to say " go to bed," but re-
membered the proper phrase in time.

" Why, where did you put your chest ? " asked
Mr. Croggan. And when he learnt how Jack had
come to sea, he gave a long whistle, and said,
"You — poor — little — devil; why, what a born
idiot you must be ! "

Jack slept that night on the floor of the deck-
house, which the second mate and the carpenter
shared, and thought himself very lucky to get
such shelter, for the rain thumped down on the
roof like marbles. The next morning the Onyx
took her pilot, weighed anchor, and beat out to
sea. Captain Mitchell came on deck in the vile
temper which was " his usual," as the Scotch say,
unless when stupefied by drink.

" Why didn't you bring me my coffee ? " he
growled to Jack, and then he boxed Jack's ears
with his clenched fists. The first mate, Mr.

TRUANJ JACK. 183

Munnens, was not much better tempered than
the skipper. The carpenter and two or three of
the foremast-men were hearty fellows, but the
rest of the crew were blackguards.

Off Margate the pilot insisted on bringing up,
although the skipper wanted to crack on. When
Jack looked at the Margate lamps twinkling
through the rushing rain, and over the wild black
waters, he almost wished himself back at Axle-
ford. How he longed to be at /tome ! The watch
were clustered round the galley, out of which
the howling wind blew a long line of red sparks ;
the rest of the men were under cover in the fore-
castle ; Mr. Croggan, swathed in oilskins, was
tramping to and fro on the poop ; but Jack, wet
to the skin, was shivering, waiting for orders, out-
side the door of the cabin, in which the skipper,
and the first mate, and the pilot were taking their
grog. Every now and then a damp sheep dan-
gling on the gallows came thump against Jack's
face, and loneliness had so taken the pluck out

J 84 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

of him, that he felt half inclined to cry. There
was nothing dignified in his distresses. He had
found out that he was nobody on board ; that if
he had a moment to spare from the captain's
work, he was at the beck and call of everybody,
and would be expected to do all the dirtiest jobs.
As he thought of what he had already done, he
grew sick again; and because he was hanging
over the side, instead of waiting to receive the
captain's orders to fetch some more hot water
from the galley, he got another hiding. Poor
Jack did not feel much like the gallant captain
of the "flying, fighting Arethusa" when he
crept into the dog-kennel of a bunk that had
been assigned him, together with a few rough
slop-clothes that had been thrown at his head
as a bare bone might be pitched to a mangy,
stray, mongrel cur. The next morning the cable
parted, the remnant fragment thumping against
the bows with a dull thud, distinguishable even
in the roaring of the storm. The ship swung

TRUANT JACK. 185

round and floundered broadside towards the land.
Sea-sick Jack almost hoped that she might drive
ashore. Sea-sick as he was, he could not help
seeing and wondering at the same hope in the
half-drunken skipper's eyes. But the pilot, and
the mates, and the men rushed forward like race-
horses ; another cable was paid out, and the Onyx
was brought up in water just deep enough to float
her.

" What are you skulking for there, you young
lubber?" was Captain Mitchell's Te Dcunt, and
Jack received his thank-offering in a rope's-end-
ing. The skipper swore fiercely at the luggers
that swooped down on and skimmed round the
Onyx like a flock of dark-winged sea-birds ; but
he was obliged to go ashore in one of them to
buy a new anchor and cable ; and when the an-
chor had been fished, the skipper relieved his
feelings by giving Jack a drubbing, for which he
did not take the trouble to invent a reason.

" Run up and shake out the main-royal, you

1 86 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

lazy young whelp !" the skipper bellowed to Jack
in the fair weather that followed the foul, as the
Onyx stood down Channel. Jack, whose sea-
sickness had passed, was delighted at the chance
of getting something sailor-like to do, but he had
the vaguest idea of where and what the main-
royal was ; and because he hesitated, the skipper
was going to lick him again. The pilot, however,
interposed, and gave Jack a dim notion of what
he was expected to do. He did not run up the
rigging very nimbly — especially when he had no
rattlins to help him ; he turned giddy every now
and then, and clutched the shrouds as if he could
not " run " or " shin " up another foot : he fumbled
sadly with the unfamiliar sail — fancying every
moment that he was going to be shaken off the
yard like a rotten pear; but still, as the pilot
said, when Jack came down (beginning at last
to recover his old opinion of his special aptitude
for a sailor's life), his performance was " very fair
for a beginning." Jack had expected louder laud

TRUANT JACK. 187

than that ; he had thought that even the skipper
would clap him on the back. The skipper did
clap him on the back — in a very unpleasant man-
ner— the next time he ran foul of Jack when the
pilot was not by.

The pilot was a very trifling check on the skip-
per's bad temper, but still Jack looked ruefully
on the boat that carried the pilot ashore.

When Eddystone's star had faded from the sky,
Jack began to think that he had been brought on
board the Onyx simply to be tormented. With
the rowdy portion of the crew, Jack was sharp
enough to see, the skipper wanted to curry favour.
The first mate, too, he seemed to want to win
over — and to be puzzled because Mr. Munnens
did not respond more cordially to his advances.
Mr. Croggan and the carpenter he snubbed, and
the jolly fellows in the forecastle, who were far
and away the best seamen in it, he was so fond
of " bully-ragging," that even Mr. Munnens, well
as he liked to hear any one blown up, when he

1 88 THE BOYS OF AXLE FORD.

had not the chance of blowing anybody up him-
self, used to put in his oar on the other side,
simply out of the sympathy which every good
seaman feels with another good seaman when his
seamanship is unjustly impugned.

You must not suppose that Jack was always
miserable ; no boy can be, however badly he is
treated. Jack soon got his sea-legs, and grew
proud of being able to go aloft without feeling
at all funky.

When Mr. Croggan, as was often the case,
had the sole command during the captain's
watch, and the drunken captain was snoring
in his berth, Jack was safe. Mr. Croggan
was as kind to him as he could be, and the good
fellows, who happened to be all in the captain's
watch, wouldn't let the other men treat Jack as
a football. Besides, the savagest people cannot
keep on being savage for ever. They will let you
alone sometimes, because they cannot get any
fun out of plaguing you — especially if they see

TRUANT JACK. 189

that you are beginning not to mind — and that
was how Jack began to feel after a bit.

And then he saw Madeira — a silver mist rising
out of a golden sea ; and porpoises were har-
pooned, and dolphins grained, and bonito hooked,
and flapping sharks hauled on board with a lump
of pork down their horrid horseshoe mouths, and
flying-fish fell on deck ; and Jack managed to
get a taste of them all ; and as he ate, he thought
what a much more heroic personage he was (though
he was kicked about like a dog) than the tame-
spirited stay-at-homes, who were being rung in to
dinner at Axleford.

Jack did not much relish crossing the Line,
however. He was the only person on board the
Onyx who had not crossed it before, and the
savage fellows made up for their lack of other
fun by "taking it out of" Jack extensively, and
even the jolly fellows thought that he was fair
game then. Jack was lathered with unmention-
able soap, the huge shaving-brush was dabbed

igo THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

into his mouth, the skin was rasped off his
cheeks and chin with a jagged bit of rusty
iron hoop, and then — up flew his heels, and he
was floundering in a tub of filthy water. And
when he had scrambled out, in spite of the many
hands that tried to keep his head under, and was
gasping for breath as if he must shake to pieces,
bucketful after bucketful of water was shot into
his face to drive the breath out of him again.

But Jack recovered his breath, and the lum-
bering, leaky old Onyx waddled on with him
into the South Atlantic. He saw the Southern
Cross and the Magellan Clouds, and whales send-
ing up silvery jets, and routing about in the waves
like monstrously magnified pigs in a monstrously
magnified strawyard. He pitched biscuit to the
huge grey and white albatrosses when they lei-
surely folded their wide double-jointed wings in
a calm, and swam up to the side like tame ducks.

But dirty weather soon set in, and the pump-
ing— which had been throughout the voyage a

TRUANT JACK I9r

cause of grumbling — became more fagging than
ever; as Jack, whose hands were skinned by
the ropes and his back stiff with the bending,
had good reason to know. The men no longer
chanted —

"They say, old man, your horse will die —
They say so — and they think so—"

as the beam was jerked up and down. Mutinous
growls were the chorus now. The way the skip-
per behaved in bad weather puzzled the men.
He would scarcely take a stitch of canvas off
the ship when she was lying over so that her
yards nearly dipped into the water.

" It 's my belief," Jack heard one of his friends
say to another, " that the old man 's either mad,
or else he 's bribed to sink the ship, and gets so
drunk he forgets he'll go down in her. If Mr.
Munnens would put the skipper in irons, I'd
stand by him."

The rowdies, however — although they did
grumble at the pumping — were on the skipper's

192 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

side. He raved at them, too, sometimes, but he
maintained no discipline. He made very little
fuss even when the mate told him that the cargo
had been broached, and a barrelful of spirit-
bottles stolen.

The skipper was carrying on as usual one day,
although black, ragged clouds, like dusty cob-
webs, were fast mounting from all sides of the
horizon. The distant sea was bristled by the
hurricane that was rushing towards the ship.

As Mr. Croggan shouted, " Stand by the royal
halyards ! " the royals flew in rags from the bolt-
ropes, and the royal masts snapped like twigs.
The skipper, drunk as usual, came reeling from
his cabin, but Mr. Munnens rushed before him.

" All hands on deck ! " the mate bellowed, and
his watch came tumbling up half drunk. Down
came the hail in lumps like jagged pebbles.
Down, too, through the night-black sky shot a
great lump of lightning, and sank like a seething
mass of molten metal into the black sea. Blue

TRUANT JACK. 193

and pink and yellow zigzags constantly scarred
the sky, and peal after peal came the awful, over-
lapping thunder. Tacks and sheets doubled like
whip-lashes ; the fiercely flapping canvas made
a thunder of its own ; the thick mainyard was
snapped in the slings as you might break a lath
across your knee. The Onyx lay over so that
it seemed impossible she could ever come up
again. When Jack went up the weather-rigging
— tauter than harp-strings — behind two of his
old friends, to give a hand in shortening sail, his
heart was in his mouth ; and though he expected
to be whirled off like a withered leaf, yet he had
just time for one thought, that stabbed him like
a knife, about his mother and his sisters from
whom he had run away.

But the Onyx did right herself when they got
the canvas off her, and was still afloat next mora->
ing, when the sky was bright again, and the zebra-
striped Cape pigeons were flitting blithely over
the subsiding sea. Masses of seaweed, too, were

13

194 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

floating on the waves. The captain, however,
obstinately refused to follow the mate's advice
to bear up for Table Bay, and ordered out the
boats.

" You 're robbing your owners, if you desert
her, Captain Mitchell," said Mr. Munnens. " I '11
stake my life we can take her into Cape Town."

"Obey orders, if you break owners, sir," growled
the skipper.

" Obey orders, and break underwriters, Captain
Mitchell — that's it, isn't it ?" answered the mate.
" I won't leave her while she '11 float — who '11
stay with me ? "

Most of the men went over the side with the
captain, but Mr. Croggan, and the carpenter, and
Jack, and three or four of the men, stopped with
Mr. Munnens ; and after a very anxious day,
Table Mountain stood up clearly dark against
the sky, and the Onyx floundered past Robben
Island, and let go her anchor in Table Bay.

The underwriters made a handsome present to

TRUANT JACK. 195

the mates and the men who had stuck to the
Onyx, when they got to hear of what had hap-
pened, since she had been insured shamefully
above her value. Perhaps the underwriters might
have had something unpleasant to say to Captain
Mitchell ; but he and the men who went with
him never turned up again.

A very different skipper from Captain Mitchell
took Jack home out of charity ; but though he
had been kindly treated, Jack respectfully de-
clined the captain's offer to take him as an ap-
prentice when they got back to England. A
brown, shabby little urchin was Jack when he
reached home. He was considerably ashamed
of himself as well as his shabbiness, when his
mother and sisters rushed out to meet him ; but
they seemed so proud of his brownness that Jack
grew proud of it too.

He soon began to brag of his adventures at
home, and he went on bragging about them

when the Doctor allowed him to come back to

13 — 2

196 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

Axleford ; but although he always gave himself
great airs when nautical matters were discussed
amongst us, on account of his extensive maritime
experience, he had given up talking about being
a sailor. His voyage to the Cape had quite cured
him of his tendency to determination of blood to
the head in school-time.

XII.

SCIENTIFIC STEPHEN.

STEPHEN MONCKTON we called the
Philosopher, because he was always " try-
ing experiments" of one kind or another. He
had views of his own on education, and therefore
did not pay much attention to his " regular work."
The Axleford system of instruction was behind
the age, he said — which was an ingenious excuse
for shirking his lessons. When he ought to have
been learning his Latin and Greek, very often he
was furtively reading Parkes's Chemical Catechism
or Joyce's Scientific Dialogues, or something of
that kind, under the lid of his locker. He seldom
played, generally spending the intervals between

198 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

school-hours in experimenting — which seemed to
consist chiefly in making bad smells. When his
cash and chemicals ran low, and he had nothing
but the saltcellars and his unfailing bottle of sul-
phuric acid to fall back upon, he would pass a
whole half-holiday in dropping the acid on the
salt. He seemed to like the white suffocating
fumes that steamed up from his saucers. The
rest of us didn't like them, and were compelled
occasionally to Lynch the Philosopher. Our
ignorant brutality moved him to indignation and
contemptuous pity.

" You dolts ! " he would shout, as we pitched
his saucers out of window, " what you call a stink
is — muriatic acid ! "

But because he could give it that fine name,
it was not any pleasanter to breathe, you see,
although the Philosopher appeared to think so.
Stephen was not a nice fellow to sit next to at
meal-times. He had a taste for physiology as
well as chemistry, and smelt like a druggist's

SCIENTIFIC STEPHEN. 199

shop with a rat-catcher's kitchen behind it. He
was a long, lean, pale-faced boy, who thought it
" unscientific " to use bear's-grease or to brush his
hair ; his finger-nails and fingers were curiously
dyed with many unfragrant colours; and his
jacket-sleeves and trouser-legs were curiously
dappled with rotten little circles caused by the
dropping of acids.

On the whole, however, Stephen was not un-
popular. He laboured hard in many ways to im-
prove our minds, and, at any rate, often succeeded
in amusing us. It was Stephen who started the
Axleford Spectator. He was its sole proprietor,
publisher, editor, reporter, compositor, printer's
devil, reader, machineman, manager, clerk, and
advertisement collector. He wrote all the cor-
respondents' letters likewise. It took about a
month to set up and print the Spectator. The
press was of the kind still to be seen in toy-shops,
and when an inch had been set up the type was
exhausted, and had to be struck off, and distri-

200 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

buted, in order that another inch might be
printed. The types were not very clearly cut, to
begin with ; they would not stand upright, how-
ever Stephen might try to make them ; and he
was not very expert at sorting his " pie." Under
these circumstances the Spectator could scarcely
be considered a triumph of typography. Its inch
strata dipped away from one another, and ran
into one another, and some of its paragraphs
looked far more like cheap dominoes than read-
ing matter. Nevertheless, the Spectator was un-
questionably cheap. A generation before the
EcJio came out, Stephen Monckton had published
a halfpenny paper ! So far as circulation went,
the Spectator was a great success. Everybody in
any way connected with the school took in its
organ. Advertisements also poured in freely,
payment being received in marbles and other
" kind " when cash disbursements would have
been inconvenient. But Stephen and his appli-
ances caved in under the Herculean task he had

SCIENTIFIC STEPHEN. 201

taken in hand. The Spectator expired when only
two copies and seven-eighths of the third had
appeared. Even the last paragraph of that in-
complete No. 3 had to be written. Thus it ran :

" THE PUBLISHER'S APOLOGY. — All my ca-
pitals are clogged up — my small a's and i's have
gone a-missing — my press-handle is broken — I
know not what to do. PLUTARCH."

I possess a perfect file of the Axleford Spec-
tator. Carefully turning over its pages, which
look now very much like dusters partially con-
verted into tinder, I make out with difficulty,
amongst the advertisements, the following : —
41 long bobus ix an Ass ;" " Stubbs miner will
give grimes tho He is so proud, of his runnind-
up to the 3rd elm &c beat him then before he
gets to the great Gates?" "Their "ill be this

cveningj^a 1 y c JJall members are

redpectfulty requested to qe prcxcutj

I cannot read the " leaders " now ; but I re-
member their subjects, and that they did not in-

202 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

terest us much. The first was on Oxygen, the
second on Hydrogen, and the third on Nitrogen.
As Stephen adopted the catechetical mode of
communicating information employed by his
scientific text-books before mentioned, and since
he merely echoed what he found there, in language
as nearly identical as condensation and an ambi-
tion to show originality would permit, he might,
perhaps, have given us fuller, more accurate, and
far more legible scientific lore by merely referring
to his authorities.

Stephen's correspondence was a good deal
spicier than his leaders. He wrote, as I have
said, all the letters, and yet he did not "hold
himself responsible for the opinions of his cor-
respondents"! In his first number he published
a letter from "A Subscriber from the Beginning,"
highly laudatory of "your ably conducted jour-
nal." The correspondence in the Spectator was
really very interesting. Although Stephen chiefly
occupied his leisure in making nasty smells, he

SCIENTIFIC STEPHEN. 203

had a knack of writing about the things we cared
about, just as if he cared about them. The second
number of the Spectator contained a very spirited
(though now utterly illegible) controversy be-
tween " Publicola " and " Miles's Boy" on a hotly
contested game at "little ring." It is so long
since I played at marbles that I can pass no
opinion on the intrinsic merits of the dispute.
The moot point was either the right to, or the
way in which to, drop a marble, with one eye
closed, on a " taw " or " commoner " — I forget
which — that had happened to stop in its rolling
just on the ring. Stephen was quite witty on
both sides of this controversy. He talked about
the ring of Saturn and the one-eyed Polyphemus.
He evolved from the depths of his consciousness
an imaginary rival paper, which "Publicola"
caustically characterized as " your co-trumpery,"
because it was supposed to advocate the view of
" Miles's Boy;" " Miles's Boy" still more caustic-
ally replying, " If the Axleford Examiner is your

2C4 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

co-trumpery, Sir, you, Sir, must be trumpery; but
I scorn to stoop to ribald punning;" the editor
adding gravely, " This correspondence must now
cease — both 'Publicola' and 'Miles's Boy' have
lost their tempers." In order that the public
might not lose a single point, Stephen, as I have
intimated, published the whole of this corre-
spondence, together with the editorial note, in
one impression.

The Spectator was dated on the ist of the
month ; it came out about the 3Oth. Stephen
could not afford to delete anything that had once
been printed, and yet he wanted to preserve a
freshness of tone. All his news was " recent " —
something that happened " yesterday," " this
morning," or, "whilst we are going to (or through)
the press." In a chronological point of view,
therefore, the Spectator was a confusing infor-
mant ; but Scientific Stephen proudly boasted
that it focused the events of the month. The
only attempt at harmonizing his paragraphs

SCIENTIFIC STEPHEN. 205

which he made was when one would otherwise
have flatly contradicted another just above it.
In that case he would preface the lower paragraph
with something of this kind :

" Since the above was set up, stating that so-
and-so happened, we have been informed that
so-and-so did not happen. We subjoin more
accurate particulars."

After all, our boys' paper only did, in one im-
pression, what men's papers of to-day do to their
own impressions of yesterday ; and to state what
is false, and retract it in the same number of a
newspaper, everybody must acknowledge, is more
honest than to sell a fib to-day, and then wait
until to-morrow and sell the contradiction.

Altogether, the Axleford Spectator would have
been a great success, we said, if Stephen had only
had plant and pluck enough to make it succeed.

We were very indignant when he threw it up ;
but none of us offered to help him. Capital might,
no doubt, have been subscribed to subsidize the

206 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

paper ; but nobody offered to give up play in
order to give Stephen literary and mechanical
aid in bringing out his venture.

We were very proud to hear that the rector
had said that the Spectator " really reflects great
credit on your boys, Doctor;" but, though we
liked credit that nobody but Stephen had earned,
we were too intellectually lazy, and too physically
active, to take the trouble to earn for ourselves
honest credit as journalists.

Next half, the indomitable Stephen started
the "Axleford Literary and Scientific Institu-
tion." The "literary" part of the business he
did not care for much, and he only allowed it to
come first in the title of his institution as a sop
to the public opinion of the school. The youngest
usher consented to deliver a literary lecture on
" Verbs ending in pi ; " our top-boy gave one on
" The Sublime and Beautiful ; " but the rest of
the course was purely scientific, and Stephen de-
livered the whole of it. He was, besides, the pre-

SCIENTIFIC STEPHEN. 207

sident, secretary, treasurer, curator, and janitor
of the institution — all of them honorary offices.
The subscriptions which he received could not
have half paid him for what he spent on speci-
mens and experiments. The Doctor let him
have the dining-hall for his lecture-room, and
before Stephen took his stand as lecturer behind
the cross-table at the top of the room, he col-
lected tickets at the door. He would not let
any one in without one, but since non-subscribers
could get them as easily as subscribers, the re-
venues of the institution were not plethorically
swollen by Stephen's scientific eloquence.

He opened the course with a scientific lecture,
attended by the Doctor and a troop of lady-
friends, all the under-masters, all the boys, old
Growler, Jim the knife-cleaner and shoeblack,
and fitfully, by the matron and the women-ser-
vants. The last-named rushed into the hall when
they heard a bang, and stayed till they heard
another, if Stephen's explanation of the last

208 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD,

did not exhaust their patience. Stephen's sub'
ject was wide — "The Advantages of an Acquaint-
ance with Science." So far as I remember the
lecture — written in a small-hand copybook, in
characters which Stephen could not always de-
cipher— the advantages of the said acquaintance
were illustrated as follows : — Stephen, in spite
of the thick towel which he had wrapped round
the red cabbage pickle-bottle he called a "re-
ceiver," got his wrist cut by the broken glass
sent flying through his explosion of a mixture
of two gases in the pickle-bottle. There were
sundry other explosions, the particulars of which
I do not recollect. A mouse danced itself into
hysterics in a jar of oxygen gas, and then ought
to have been killed by being plunged into a jar
of carbonic acid gas; but the excited mouse
made prudent use of its excitement, and jumped
out of the carbonic acid, causing great commo-
tion amongst the ladies, as it scuttled along the
floor. A bladder balloon, supposed to be filled

SCIENTIFIC STEPHEN. 209

with hydrogen gas, ought to have gone up to the
ceiling, but there was a hole in the bladder, and
so it would not go up. Candles were put out by
having apparently empty tumblers tilted over
them. This experiment did not always succeed ;
and when it did, the smoke of the candle was not
pleasant. Stephen's specialty was nasty smells,
and he made a good many of them, which I am
not scientific enough to characterize, that night.
His lecture was abruptly brought to a close by
one of these malodours. His pneumatic trough
was of his own construction, and whilst he
was making sulphuretted hydrogen, bubble after
bubble of it escaped into the air. The conse-
quence was a wild stampede from the lecture-
room ; but Stephen threw up the windows, and
stuck to his post. When the atmosphere was a
little purified, the Doctor and a few of Stephen's
audience — not including the ladies — came back
out of compassion to listen to the lecturer's pre-
cipitated peroration. I cannot be sure as to the

14

210 TP1E BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

exact words ; but, so far as my memory serves,
it ran thus — Stephen coughing, and then trying
to find his place again, after every half-dozen
words :

" Ladies and gentlemen — We have thus seen
how in every department of life science ministers
to our wants and promotes our comfort. Feeble
as my attempts to prove these truths in words
may have been, the experiments I have performed
must have shown you, that if we hearken to the
voice of Nature, interpreted by science, they
prove themselves. I have now, ladies and gen-
tlemen, only to thank you for the patient atten-
tion with which you have listened to my humble
effort to demonstrate that, without a practical
acquaintance with science, life would be robbed
of all its charms."

The Doctor cried "hear, hear!" and proposed
a vote of thanks to the lecturer, which was se-
conded by the youngest usher ; both the pro-
poser and the seconder being compelled, like the

SCIENTIFIC STEPHEN. 211

lecturer, to stop to cough every now and then.
The Doctor's friends, however, did not come to
any more of Stephen's lectures. The last — on
" The Domestic Architecture of the Mole " — was
attended, I think, by only three fellows besides
myself. Stephen had prepared elaborate dia-
grams of the internal structure of mole-hills, and
he had secured, at considerable expense, a live
mole from the Axleford mole-catcher. Every-
thing the lecturer said, and everything the mole
did — not much that we could see, since he per-
formed his experiments in a washing-tub full of
earth — we greeted with loud applause ; but four
people clapping their hands in a room that would
hold a couple of hundred can hardly be consi-
dered a stimulating audience. Stephen conscien-
tiously read his last lecture out to the last word ;
but the institution's first course of lectures was
its only one.

One bit of science, however, Stephen did suc-
ceed in popularizing in Axleford. He sent us

14— 2

212 THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

electrotyping-mad. There was scarcely a fellow
who did not invest in jam-pots, zinc, copper wire,
and blue vitriol. We cut out the seal of every
letter we got (adhesive envelopes were not then
in fashion) ; we begged and borrowed seal im-
pressions right and left, and smudged ourselves
up to the eyebrows in blackleading them, as if
we had been blackleading grates.

But this craze soon died out. Stephen got
handsome seals which he mounted very neatly,
and polished up until they shone like gold ; but
most of us had to content ourselves with deposits
of brown dust like that in the hollow core of a
maggotty apple.

Stephen explained very learnedly how it was
this happened, but we were too stupid to learn
how to keep it from happening ; and electro-
typing went out of fashion at Axleford almost
as rapidly as it had come into fashion.

One of Stephen's electrotype seals had Mi-
nerva's Owl on it. He was very proud of this

SCIENTIFIC STEPHEN. 213

seal, considering it emblematic of his own cha-
racter. He wore it on all high days and holidays.
He had it on at a breaking-up party, at which
Stephen did look like an owl — but not a very
wise one.

One of the grown-up people the Doctor had
invited was a funny fellow, who was very fond of
teasing Stephen. There was a great talk about
mesmerism then — just as there is now-a-days
about spirit-rapping — and in the course of the
evening, this Mr. Johnson began to tell some
most wonderful stories about what he had seen
at mesmeric stances in London. He knew that
it made Stephen wild to hear about mesmerism,
and so he finished off with —

" There, Monckton, what do you say to animal
magnetism now ? "

"Those who do the things are knaves, and
those who believe in them are fools," was Scien-
tific Stephen's sententious but not very civil
answer.

THE BOYS OF AXLEFORD.

"Well, will you let me try to mesmerize you ?"
" I defy you, if you try for half a year."
" But you '11 do just what I tell you to give me
a chance ? "

Stephen consented, and Mr. Johnson placed
two chairs in the middle of the room, and seated
Stephen on one of them. Then he went out,
coming back in a little time with two cups, full of
water, on two plates.

"Now, remember," said Mr. Johnson, as he
seated himself on the empty chair, "you must
never take your eyes off me — till I make you
close them — and imitate everything I do."

Then he handed Stephen one of the cups on
one of the plates, and began what he called the
"passes." Ladies and girls, masters and boys,
crowded round in a circle. At first there was an
awe-hushed stillness, but in a minute — why you
will hear directly — we all of us had hard work
to keep our countenances. Ever and anon Mr.
Johnson dipped the tips of his fingers into the

SCIENTIFIC STEPHEN. 215

water, rubbed them on the bottom of his plate,
and then drew them over his nose, round his eyes,
and down and across his forehead and his face.

Stephen scrupulously imitated every move-
ment, conscientiously anxious to give the "science
falsely so called" a fair chance, but wearing a
supercilious look of scientific incredulity that
every moment grew more comical. Presently
Mr. Johnson wetted the palm of his hand, rubbed
it on the bottom of his plate as if he were scour-
ing the platter, and then rubbed his hand all over
his face as if he were soaping it Stephen fol-
lowed his example as conscientiously and super-
ciliously as ever.

"Don't you feel sleepy now?" asked Mr.
Johnson.

" Not a bit of it," answered Stephen. " I said
it was all humbug, and I Ve proved it."

" Surely you must feel something," Mr. John-
son persisted. "Doesn't he look strange, poor
fellow ? Bring him a looking-glass."

216 THE BOYS OF AXLE FORD.

We waited until the astounded Stephen had
seen himself in it, and then let loose the peal
after peal of laughter we had found it so hard to
keep in.

Stephen's plate had been held over the smoke
of a candle before it was given him, and he was
as black in the face as a sweep.

THE END.

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