The Channings. Henry Wood

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СКАЧАТЬ insensible, blood oozing from a wound in the forehead. How had it come about? What had caused it?

      Meanwhile, the college boys, after driving Mr. Ketch nearly wild with their jokes and ridicule touching the mystery of the keys, were scared by the sudden appearance of the head-master. They decamped as fast as their legs could carry them, bringing themselves to an anchor at a safe distance, under shade of the friendly elm trees. Bywater stuck his back against one, and his laughter came forth in peals. Some of the rest tried to stop it, whispering caution.

      “It’s of no good talking, you fellows! I can’t keep it in; I shall burst if I try. I have been at bursting point ever since I twitched the keys out of his hands in the cloisters, and threw the rusty ones down. You see I was right—that it was best for one of us to go in without our boots, and to wait. If half a dozen had gone, we should never have got away unheard.”

      “I pretty nearly burst when I saw the bishop come out, instead of Ketch,” cried Tod Yorke. “Burst with fright.”

      “So did a few more of us,” said Galloway. “I say, will there be a row?”

      “Goodness knows! He is a kind old chap is the bishop. Better for it to have been him than the dean.”

      “What was it Ketch said, about Jenkins seeing a glowworm?”

      “Oh!” shrieked Bywater, holding his sides, “that was the best of all! I had taken a lucifer out of my pocket, playing with it, while they went round to the south gate, and it suddenly struck fire. I threw it over to the burial-ground: and that soft Jenkins took it for a glowworm.”

      “It’s a stunning go!” emphatically concluded Mr. Tod Yorke. “The best we have had this half, yet.”

      “Hush—sh—sh—sh!” whispered the boys under their breath. “There goes the master.”

      CHAPTER XIII. – MAD NANCE

      Mr. Galloway was in his office. Mr. Galloway was fuming and fretting at the non-arrival of his clerk, Mr. Jenkins. Mr. Jenkins was a punctual man; in fact, more than punctual: his proper time for arriving at the office was half-past nine; but the cathedral clock had rarely struck the quarter-past before Mr. Jenkins would be at his post. Almost any other morning it would not have mattered a straw to Mr. Galloway whether Jenkins was a little after or a little before his time; but on this particular morning he had especial need of him, and had come himself to the office unusually early.

      One-two, three-four! chimed the quarters of the cathedral. “There it goes—half-past nine!” ejaculated Mr. Galloway. “What does Jenkins mean by it? He knew he was wanted early.”

      A sharp knock at the office door, and there entered a little dark woman, in a black bonnet and a beard. She was Mr. Jenkins’s better half, and had the reputation for being considerably the grey mare.

      “Good morning, Mr. Galloway. A pretty kettle of fish, this is!”

      “What’s the matter now?” asked Mr. Galloway, surprised at the address. “Where’s Jenkins?”

      “Jenkins is in bed with his head plastered up. He’s the greatest booby living, and would positively have come here all the same, but I told him I’d strap him down with cords if he attempted it. A pretty object he’d have looked, staggering through the streets, with his head big enough for two, and held together with white plaster!”

      “What has he done to his head?” wondered Mr. Galloway.

      “Good gracious! have you not heard?” exclaimed the lady, whose mode of speech was rarely overburdened with polite words, though she meant no disrespect by it. “He got locked up in the cloisters last night with old Ketch and the bishop.”

      Mr. Galloway stared at her. He had been dining, the previous evening, with some friends at the other end of the town, and knew nothing of the occurrence. Had he been within hearing when the college bell tolled out at night, he would have run to ascertain the cause as eagerly as any schoolboy. “Locked up in the cloisters with old Ketch and the bishop!” he repeated, in amazement. “I do not understand.”

      Mrs. Jenkins proceeded to enlighten him. She gave the explanation of the strange affair of the keys, as it had been given to her by the unlucky Joe. While telling it, Arthur Channing entered, and, almost immediately afterwards, Roland Yorke.

      “The bishop, of all people!” uttered Mr. Galloway. “What an untoward thing for his lordship!”

      “No more untoward for him than for others,” retorted the lady. “It just serves Jenkins right. What business had he to go dancing through the cloisters with old Ketch and his keys?”

      “But how did Jenkins get hurt?” asked Mr. Galloway, for that particular point had not yet been touched upon.

      “He is the greatest fool going, is Jenkins,” was the complimentary retort of Jenkins’s wife. “After he had helped to ring out the bell, he must needs go poking and groping into the organ-loft, hunting for matches or some such insane rubbish. He might have known, had he possessed any sense, that candles and matches are not likely to be there in summer-time! Why, if the organist wanted ever so much to stop in after dark, when the college is locked up for the night, he wouldn’t be allowed to do it! It’s only in winter, when he has to light a candle to get through the afternoon service, that they keep matches and dips up there.”

      “But about his head?” repeated Mr. Galloway, who was aware of the natural propensity of Mrs. Jenkins to wander from the point under discussion.

      “Yes, about his head!” she wrathfully answered. “In attempting to descend the stairs again, he missed his footing, and pitched right down to the bottom of the flight. That’s how his head came in for it. He wants a nurse with him always, does Jenkins, for he is no better than a child in leading-strings.”

      “Is he much hurt?”

      “And there he’d have lain till morning, but for the bishop,” resumed Mrs. Jenkins, passing over the inquiry. “After his lordship got out, he, finding Jenkins did not come, told Thorpe to go and look for him in the organ-loft. Thorpe said he should have done nothing of the sort, but for the bishop’s order; he was just going to lock the great doors again, and there Jenkins would have been fast! They found him lying at the foot of the stairs, just inside the choir gates, with no more life in him than there is in a dead man.”

      “I asked you whether he is seriously hurt, Mrs. Jenkins.”

      “Pretty well. He came to his senses as they were bringing him home, and somebody ran for Hurst, the surgeon. He is better this morning.”

      “But not well enough to come to business?”

      “Hurst told him if he worried himself with business, or anything else to-day, he’d get brain fever as sure as a gun. He ordered him to stop in bed and keep quiet, if he could.”

      “Of course he must do so,” observed Mr. Galloway.

      “There is no of course in it, when men are the actors,” dissented Mrs. Jenkins. “Hurst did well to say ‘if he could,’ when ordering him to keep quiet. I’d rather have an animal ill in the house, than I’d have a man—they are ten times more reasonable. There has Jenkins been, tormenting himself ever since seven o’clock this morning about coming here; he was wanted particularly, he said. ‘Would you go if you were dead?’ I asked him; and he stood it out that if he were dead it would be a different thing. ‘Not different at all,’ I said. A nice thing it would be to have to СКАЧАТЬ