The Dew of Their Youth, Samuel Rutherford Crockett [fox in socks read aloud .txt] 📗

would never have been taken in any ordinary affair of life. Jo had not time, however, for Agnes Anne had a strong imagination, coupled with a highly nervous organization. She laughed out suddenly, in the middle of a solemn Horatian hush, a wild, hysterical laugh, which brought my father to his feet, broad awake in a second. The class gazed open-mouthed, the pale face of Fred Esquillant alone twitching responsively.
"What have you been saying to Agnes Anne MacAlpine?" demanded my father, who would sooner have resigned than been obliged to own son or daughter as such in school-time.
"Nothing!" said Jo Kettle, speaking according to the honour that obliges schoolboys to untruth as a mode of professional honour. Then Jo, seeing the frown on the master's face, and forestalling the words that were ready to come from his lips, "But, sirrah, I saw you!" amended hastily, "At least, I was only asking Agnes Anne to sit a little farther along!"
"What!" cried my father, with the snap of the eye that meant punishment, "to sit farther along, when you had no interest in this classical lesson, sir--a lesson you are incapable of understanding, and--all the length of an empty bench at your left hand! You shall speak with me at the close of the lesson, and that, sirrah, is now! The class is dismissed! I shall have the pleasure of a little interview with Master Joseph Kettle, student of mensuration."
Jo had his interview, in which figured a certain leathern strap, called "Lochgelly" after its place of manufacture--a branch of native industry much cursed by Scottish school-children. "Lochgelly" was five-fingered, well pickled in brine, well rubbed with oil, well used on the boys, but, except by way of threat, unknown to the girls. Jo emerged tingling but triumphant. Indeed, several new ideas had occurred to him. Eden Valley Academy stood around and drank in the wondrous tale with all its ears and, almost literally, with one mouth. Jo Kettle told the story so well that I well-nigh believed it myself. He even turned to me for corroboration.
"Didn't he tell you that, Duncan? That was the way of it, eh, Duncan?"
I denied, indeed, and would have stated the truth as it was in Guard Webb. But my futile and feeble negations fell unheeded, swept away by the pour of Jo's circumstantial lying.
Finally he ran off into the village and was lost to sight. I have little doubt that he played truant, in full recognition of pains and penalties to come, for the mere pleasure of going from door to door and "raising the town," as he called it. I consoled myself by the thought that he would find few but womenfolk at home at that hour, while the shopkeepers would have too much consideration for their tills and customers to follow a notorious romancer like Jo on such a fool's errand.
I cannot tell how that afternoon's lessons were got over in Eden Valley Academy. The hum of disturbance reached even the juniors, skulking peacefully under little Mr. Stephen, the assistant. Only Miss Huntingdon, in the Infant Department, remained quiet and neat as a dove new-preened among her murmuring throng of unconscious little folk.
But in the senior school, though I never reported a boy to my father (preferring to postpone his case for private dealing in the playground), the lid of the desk was opened and snapped sharply every five minutes to give exit and entrance to "Lochgelly." Seldom have I seen my father so roused. He hated not to understand everything that was going on in the school. He longed to ask me what I knew about it, but, according to his habit, generously forbore, lest he should lead me to tell tales upon my fellows. For, though actually junior assistant to my father, I was still a scholar, which made my position difficult indeed. To me it seemed as if the clock on the wall above the fireplace would never strike the hour of four.


CHAPTER II
"IN THE NAME OF THE LAW!"
At last--at last! The door between the seniors and Mr. Stephen's juniors was thrown open. My father, making his usual formal bow to his assistant, said, "When you are ready, Mr. Stephen!" And Mr. Stephen was always ready. Then with his back to the hinges of the door, and his strong black beard with the greying strands in it set forward at an angle, Mr. John MacAlpine, head-master of Eden Valley Academy, said a few severe words on the afternoon's lack of discipline, and prophesied in highly coloured language the exemplary manner in which any repetition of it would be treated on the morrow. Then he doubled all home lessons, besides setting a special imposition to each class. Having made this clear, he hoped that the slight token of his displeasure might assure us of his intention to do his duty by us faithfully, and then, with the verse of a chanted psalm we were let go.
Class by class defiled with rumble of boots and tramp of wooden-soled clogs, the boys first, the girls waiting till the outside turmoil had abated--but, nevertheless, as anxious as any to be gone. I believe we expected to tumble over slow serpents and nimble spectres coming visiting up the school-loaning, or coiling in festoons among the tall Scotch firs at the back of the playground.
We of the sixth class were in the rear--I last of all, for I had to lock away the copybooks, turn the maps to the wall, and give my father the key. _But_ I had warned the other seniors that they were not to start without me.
And then, what a race! A bare mile it was, through the thick fringes of woods most of the way--as soon, that is, as we were out of the village. Along the wall of the Deer Park we ran, where we kept instinctively to the far side of the road. We of the highest class were far in front--I mean those of us who kept the pace. The Fifth had had a minute or two start of us, so they were ahead at first, but we barged through their pack without mercy, scattering them in all directions.
There at last was the gate before us. We had reached it first. Five of us there were, Sam Gordon, Ivie Craig, Harry Stoddart, Andrew Clark and myself--yes, there was another--that forward Gerty Greensleeves, who had kilted her rough grey-green dress and run with the best, all to prove her boast that, but for the clothes she had to wear, she was as good a runner as the best boy there. Indeed, if the truth must be told, she could outrun all but me.
The tall spikes, the massive brass padlock, green with weathering, in which it was doubtful if any key would turn, the ancient "Notice to Trespassers," massacred by the stones of home-returning schoolboys--these were all that any of us could see at first. The barrier of the deer-park wall was high and unclimbable. The massy iron of the gates looked as if it had not been stirred for centuries.
But a tense interest held us all spellbound. We could see nothing but some stray glimpses of an ivy-clad wall. A weathercock, that had once been gilded, stood out black against the evening sky. The Grey Lady in the rustling silk, through whom you could see the rain drops splash on the gravel stones, was by no means on view. No green demons leaped these sullen ten-foot barricades, and no forwandered sea-serpent threw oozy wimples on the green-sward or hissed at us between the rusty bars.
It was, at first, decidedly disappointing. We ordered each other to stop breathing so loudly, after our burst of running. We listened, but there was not even the sough of wind through the trees--nothing but the beating of our own hearts.
What had we come out to see? Apparently nothing. The school considered itself decidedly "sold," and as usual prepared to take vengeance, first upon Jo Kettle and then, as that youth still persisted in a discreet absence of body, on myself.
"You spoke to Sandy Webb, the guard," said Gertrude-of-the-Sleeves, scowling upon me; "what did he say?"
Before I could answer Boyd Connoway, the village do-nothing, enterprising idler and general boys' abettor, beckoned us across the road. He was on the top of a little knoll, thick with the yellow of broom and the richer orange of gorse. Here he had stretched himself very greatly at his ease. For Boyd Connoway knew how to wait, and he was waiting now. Hurry was nowhere in Boyd's dictionary. Not that he had ever looked.
In a moment we were over the dyke, careless of the stones that we sent trickling down to afflict the toes of those who should come after us. We stood on the top of the mound. Connoway disturbed himself just enough to sit up for our sakes, which he would not have done for a dozen grown men. He removed the straw from his mouth, and pointed with it to the end chimney nearest to the great wood of Marnhoul.
We gazed earnestly, following the straw and gradually we could see, rising into the still air an unmistakable "pew" of palest blue smoke--which, as we looked, changed into a dense white pillar that rose steadily upwards, detaching itself admirably against the deep green black of the Scotch firs behind.
"There," said Connoway gravely, "yonder is your ghost mending his fire!"
We stood at gaze, uncomprehending, too astonished for speech. We had come, even the unbelievers of us, prepared for the supernatural, for something surpassingly eery, and anything so commonplace as the smoke of a fire was a surprise greater than the sight of all Jo Kettle's imaginations coming at us abreast.
Yet the people who owned the great house of Marnhoul were far away--few had ever seen any of them. Their affairs were in the hands of a notable firm of solicitors in Dumfries. How any mortal could have entered that great abode, or inhabited it after the manner of men, was beyond all things inexplicable. But there before us the blue reek continued to mount, straight as a pillar, till it reached the level of the trees on the bank behind, when a gentle current of air turned it sharply at right angles to the south.
Now we heard the tramp of many feet, and beneath us we saw Jo Kettle with half-a-dozen of his father's workers, and the village constable to make sure that all was done in due and proper order. To these was joined a crowd of curious townsmen, eager for any new thing. All were armed to the teeth with rusty cutlasses and old horse pistols, which, when loaded, made the expedition one of no inconsiderable peril.
The man with the crowbar applied it to the rusty chain of the padlock. Two others assisted him, but instead of breaking the chain, the iron standard of the gate crumbled into so much flaky iron rust, while padlock and attachments swung free upon the other. It was easy enough to enter after that.
"In the name of the law!" cried the constable, taking a little staff with a silver crown upon it in his hand. And at the word the gate creaked open and the crowd pressed in.
But the constable held up his hand.
"'In the name of the law,' I said. I _might_ have put it, 'In the King's name,' but what I meant was that we are to proceed in decency and order--no unseemly rabbling, scuffling, or mischief making--otherwise ye have me to reckon with. Let no word of ghosts and siclike be heard. The case is infinitely more serious----"
"Hear to Jocky wi' his langnebbit words!" whispered Boyd Connoway in my ear.
"Infinitely more so, I say. It is evident to the meanest capacity--"
"Evidently!"