“Oh, nothing, Bywater.”
“Charley Channing,” exclaimed Gaunt, “do you know who did it?”
“If I did, Gaunt, I should not tell,” was the fearless answer.
“Do you know, Charley?” cried Tom Channing, who was one of the seniors of the school.
“Where’s the good of asking that wretched little muff?” burst forth Gerald Yorke. “He’s only a girl. How do you know it was not one of the lay-clerks, Bywater? They carry ink in their pockets, I’ll lay. Or any of the masons might have gone into the vestry, for the matter of that.”
“It wasn’t a lay-clerk, and it wasn’t a mason,” stoically nodded Bywater. “It was a college boy. And I shall lay my finger upon him as soon as I am a little bit surer than I am. I am three parts sure now.”
“If Charley Channing does not suspect somebody, I’m not here,” exclaimed Hurst, who had closely watched the movement alluded to; and he brought his hand down fiercely on the desk as he spoke. “Come, Miss Channing, just shell out what you know; it’s a shame the choristers should lie under such a ban: and of course we shall do so, with Pye.”
“You be quiet, Hurst, and let Miss Charley alone,” drawled Bywater. “I don’t want him, or anybody else to get pummelled to powder; I’ll find it out for myself, I say. Won’t my old aunt be in a way though, when she sees the surplice, and finds she has another to make! I say, Hurst, didn’t you croak out that solo! Their lordships in the wigs will be soliciting your photograph as a keepsake.”
“I hope they’ll set it in diamonds,” retorted Hurst.
The boys began to file out, putting on their trenchers, as they clattered down the steps. Charley Channing sat himself down in the cloisters on a pile of books, as if willing that the rest should pass out before him. His brother saw him sitting there, and came up to him, speaking in an undertone.
“Charley, you know the rules of the school: one boy must not tell of another. As Bywater says, you’d get pummelled to powder.”
“Look here, Tom. I tell you—”
“Hold your tongue, boy!” sharply cried Tom Channing. “Do you forget that I am a senior? You heard the master’s words. We know no brothers in school life, you must remember.”
Charley laughed. “Tom, you think I am a child, I believe. I didn’t enter the school yesterday. All I was going to tell you was this: I don’t know any more than you who inked the surplice; and suspicion goes for nothing.”
“All right,” said Tom Channing, as he flew after the rest; and Charley sat on, and fell into a reverie.
The senior boy of the school, you have heard, was Gaunt. The other three seniors, Tom Channing, Harry Huntley, and Gerald Yorke, possessed a considerable amount of power; but nothing equal to that vested in Gaunt. They had all three entered the school on the same day, and had kept pace with each other as they worked their way up in it, consequently not one could be said to hold priority; and when Gaunt should quit the school at the following Michaelmas, one of the three would become senior. Which, you may wish to ask? Ah, we don’t know that, yet.
Charley Channing—a truthful, good boy, full of integrity, kind and loving by nature, and a universal favourite—sat tilted on the books. He was wishing with all his heart that he had not seen something which he had seen that day. He had been going through the cloisters in the afternoon, about the time that all Helstonleigh, college boys included, were in the streets watching for the sheriff’s procession, when he saw one of the seniors steal (Bywater had been happy in the epithet) out of the cathedral into the quiet cloisters, peer about him, and then throw a broken ink-bottle into the graveyard which the cloisters enclosed. The boy stole away without perceiving Charley; and there sat Charley now, trying to persuade himself by some ingenious sophistry—which, however, he knew was sophistry—that the senior might not have been the one in the mischief; that the ink-bottle might have been on legitimate duty, and that he threw it from him because it was broken. Charles Channing did not like these unpleasant secrets. There was in the school a code of honour—the boys called it so—that one should not tell of another; and if the head-master ever went the length of calling the seniors to his aid, those seniors deemed themselves compelled to declare it, if the fault became known to them. Hence Tom Channing’s hasty arrest of his brother’s words.
“I wonder if I could see the ink-bottle there?” quoth Charles to himself. Rising from the books he ran through the cloisters to a certain part, and there, by a dexterous spring, perched himself on to the frame of the open mullioned windows. The gravestones lay pretty thick in the square, enclosed yard, the long, dank grass growing around them; but there appeared to be no trace of an ink-bottle.
“What on earth are you mounted up there for? Come down instantly. You know the row there has been about the walls getting defaced.”
The speaker was Gerald Yorke, who had come up silently. Openly disobey him, young Channing dared not, for the seniors exacted obedience in school and out of it. “I’ll get down directly, sir. I am not hurting the wall.”
“What are you looking at? What is there to see?” demanded Yorke.
“Nothing particular. I was looking for what I can’t see,” pointedly returned Charley.
“Look here, Miss Channing; I don’t quite understand you to-day. You were excessively mysterious in school, just now, over that surplice affair. Who’s to know you were not in the mess yourself?”
“I think you might know it,” returned Charley, as he jumped down. “It was more likely to have been you than I.”
Yorke laid hold of him, clutching his jacket with a firm grasp. “You insolent young jackanapes! Now! what do you mean? You don’t stir from here till you tell me.”
“I’ll tell you, Mr. Yorke; I’d rather tell,” cried the boy, sinking his voice to a whisper. “I was here when you came peeping out of the college doors this afternoon, and I saw you come up to this niche, and fling away an ink-bottle.”
Yorke’s face flushed scarlet. He was a tall, strong fellow, with a pale complexion, thick, projecting lips, and black hair, promising fair to make a Hercules—but all the Yorkes were finely framed. He gave young Channing a taste of his strength; the boy, when shaken, was in his hands as a very reed. “You miserable imp! Do you know who is said to be the father of lies?”
“Let me alone, sir. It’s no lie, and you know it’s not. But I promise you on my honour that I won’t split. I’ll keep it in close; always, if I can. The worst of me is, I bring things out sometimes without thought,” he added ingenuously. “I know I do; but I’ll try and keep in this. You needn’t be in a passion, Yorke; I couldn’t help seeing what I did. It wasn’t my fault.”
Yorke’s face had grown purple with anger. “Charles Channing, if you don’t unsay what you have said, I’ll beat you to within an inch of your life.”
“I can’t unsay it,” was the answer.
“You can’t!” reiterated Yorke, grasping him as a hawk would a pigeon. “How dare you brave me to my presence? Unsay the lie you have told.”
“I am in God’s presence, Yorke, as well as in yours,” cried the boy, reverently; “and I will not tell a lie.”
“Then take your whacking! I’ll teach you what it is to invent fabrications! I’ll put you up for—”
Yorke’s tongue and hands stopped. Turning out of the private cloister-entrance of the deanery, right upon them, had come Dr. Gardner, one of the prebendaries. He cast a displeased glance at Yorke, not speaking; and little Channing, touching his trencher to the doctor, flew to the place where he had left his books, caught them up, and ran out of the cloisters towards home.
CHAPTER II. – BAD NEWS
The ground near the cathedral, occupied by the deanery and the prebendal residences, was called the Boundaries. There