[Illustration: PAUL AS A CHIEF’S SON. [_See p. 87._]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
WHO WAS PAUL GRAYSON?
BY
_JOHN HABBERTON_
AUTHOR OF “HELEN’S BABIES” ETC.
_ILLUSTRATED_
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE
1881
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1881, by
_HARPER & BROTHERS_,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
-------
_All rights reserved._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_CONTENTS_.
CHAPTER I. PAGE
THE NEW PUPIL 9
CHAPTER II.
THE FIGHT 22
CHAPTER III.
MUSIC AND MANNERS 35
CHAPTER IV.
WHO WILL TELL? 50
CHAPTER V.
THOSE JAIL-BIRDS 65
CHAPTER VI.
THE BEANTASSEL BENEFIT 78
CHAPTER VII.
A BEAUTIFUL THEORY RUINED 90
CHAPTER VIII.
DARED 103
CHAPTER IX.
BENNY’S PARTY 117
CHAPTER X.
RECAPTURED 130
CHAPTER XI.
THE TRIAL 143
CHAPTER XII.
THE END OF IT 158
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_ILLUSTRATIONS_.
PAGE
Paul as a Chief’s Son Frontispiece
Paul Grayson 13
Just in Time to see Grayson give Bert a Blow on the 27
Chest
The Reconciliation 31
Attack on the Organ-grinder 47
Benny Mallow in the Barn 53
“Mr. Morton, I was there” 61
The Window of the Counterfeiter’s Cell 75
“You’re a Chief’s Son, aren’t you?” 97
Paul Grayson and Benny Mallow 115
“De Counterfeiter done broke out ob de Jail” 125
Paul and the Counterfeiter 137
The Sheriff enforces Order 149
“Father!” 155
The Meeting in the School-yard 161
------------------------------------------------------------------------
WHO WAS PAUL GRAYSON?
----------------------------
CHAPTER I.
_THE NEW PUPIL._
THE boys who attended Mr. Morton’s Select School in the village of
Laketon did not profess to know more than boys of the same age and
advantages elsewhere; but of one thing they were absolutely certain, and
that was that no teacher ever rang his bell to assemble the school or
call the boys in from recess until just that particular instant when the
fun in the school-yard was at its highest, and the boys least wanted to
come in. A teacher might be very fair about some things: he might help a
boy through a hard lesson, or give him fewer bad marks than he had
earned; he might even forget to report to a boy’s parents all the cases
of truancy in which their son had indulged; but when a teacher once laid
his hand upon that dreadful bell and stepped to the window, it really
seemed as if every particle of human sympathy went out of him.
On one bright May morning, however, the boys who made this regular daily
complaint were few; indeed, all of them, except Bert Sharp, who had
three consecutive absences to explain, and no written excuse from his
father to help him out, were already inside the school-room, and even
Bert stood where he could look through the open door while he cudgelled
his wits and smothered his conscience in the endeavor to frame an
explanation that might seem plausible. The boys already inside lounged
near any desks but their own, and conversed in low tones about almost
everything except the subject uppermost in their minds, this subject
being a handsome but rather sober-looking boy of about fourteen years,
who was seated at a desk in the back part of the room, and trying,
without any success whatever, to look as if he did not know that all the
other boys were looking at him.
It was not at all wonderful that the boys stared, for none of them had
ever before seen the new pupil, and Laketon was so small a town that the
appearance of a strange boy was almost as unusual an event as the coming
of a circus.
“Let’s give it up,” said Will Palmer, who had for five minutes been
discussing with several other boys all sorts of improbabilities about
the origin of the new pupil; “let’s give it up until roll-call; then
we’ll learn his name, and that’ll be a little comfort.”
“I wish Mr. Morton would hurry, then,” said Benny Mallow. “I came early
this morning to see if I couldn’t win back my striped alley from Ned
Johnston, and this business has kept us from playing a single game.
Quick, boys, quick! Mr. Morton’s getting ready to touch the bell.”
The group separated in an instant, and every member was seated before
the bell struck; so were most of the other boys, and so many pairs of
eyes looked inquiringly at the teacher that Mr. Morton himself had to
bite his lower lip very hard to keep from laughing as he formally rang
the school to order. As the roll was called, the boys answered to their
names in a prompt, sharp, business-like way, quite unusual in
school-rooms; and as the call proceeded, the responses became so quick
as to sometimes get a little ahead of the names that the boys knew were
coming.
Suddenly, as the names beginning with G were reached, and Charlie Gunter
had his mouth wide open, ready to say “Here,” the teacher called, “Paul
Grayson.”
“Here!” answered the new boy.
A slight sensation ran through the school; no boy did anything for which
he had to be called to order, yet somehow the turning of heads, the
catching of breath, and the letting go of breath that had been held in
longer than usual, made a slight commotion, which reached the ears of
the strange pupil, and made him look rather more ill at ease than
before.
[Illustration: PAUL GRAYSON.]
The answers to the roll became at once less spirited; indeed, Benny
Mallow was staring so hard, now that he had a name to increase his
interest in the stranger, that he forgot entirely to answer to his name,
and was compelled to sit on the chair beside the teacher’s desk from
that moment until recess.
That recess seemed longer in coming than any other that the school had
ever known—longer even than that memorable one in which a strolling trio
of Italian musicians had been specially contracted with to begin playing
in the school-yard the moment the boys came down. Finally, however, the
bell rang half-past ten, and the whole roomful hurried down-stairs, but
not before Mr. Morton had called Joe Appleby, the largest boy in school,
and formally introduced Paul Grayson, with the expressed wish that he
should make his new companion feel at home among the boys.
Appleby went about his work with an air that showed how fully he
realized the importance of his position: he introduced Grayson to every
boy, beginning with the largest; and it was in vain that Benny Mallow,
who was the youngest of the party, made all sorts of excuses to throw
himself in the way of the distinguished couple, even to the extent of
once getting his feet badly mixed up with those of Grayson. When,
however, the ceremony ended, and Appleby was at liberty, so many of the
boys crowded around him that the new pupil was in some danger of being
lonely.
“Find out for yourselves,” was Appleby’s dignified reply to his
questioners. “I don’t consider it gentlemanly to tell everything I know
about a man.”
At this rebuke the smaller boys considered Appleby a bigger man than
ever before, but some of the larger ones hinted that Appleby couldn’t
very well tell what he didn’t know, at which Appleby took offence, and
joined the group of boys who were leaning against a fence, in the shade
of which Will Palmer had already inveigled the new boy into
conversation.
“By-the-way,” said Will, “there’s time yet for a game or two of ball.
Will you play?”
“Yes, I’ll be glad to,” said Grayson.
“Who else?” asked Will.
“I!” shouted all of the boys, who did not forget their grammar so far as
to say “Me!” instead. Really, the eagerness of the boys to play ball had
never before been equalled in the memory of any one present, and Will
Palmer cooled off some quite warm friends by his inability to choose
more than two boys to complete the quartette for a common game of ball.
It did the disappointed boys a great deal of good to hear the teacher’s
bell ring just as Will Palmer “caught himself in” to Grayson’s bat.
“You play a splendid game,” said Will to Grayson, as they went up-stairs
side by side. “Where did you learn it?”
Joe Appleby, who was on the step in front of the couple, dragged just an
instant in order to catch the expected information, but all he got was a
bump from Palmer that nearly tumbled him forward on his dignified nose,
as Grayson answered,
“Oh, in several places; nowhere in particular.”
Palmer immediately determined that he would follow his new schoolmate
home at noon, and discover where he lived. Then he would interview the
neighbors, and try to get some information ahead of that stuck-up Joe
Appleby, who, considering he was only four months older than Palmer
himself, put on too many airs for anything. But when school was
dismissed, Palmer was disgusted at noting that at least half of the
other boys were distributing themselves for just such an operation as
the one he had planned. Besides, Grayson did not come down-stairs with
the crowd. Could it be possible that he was from the country, and had
brought a cold lunch to school with him? Palmer hurried up the stairs to
see, but met the teacher and the new boy coming down, and the two walked
away, and together entered the house of old Mrs. Bartle, where Mr.
Morton boarded.
“He’s a boarding scholar,” exclaimed Benny Mallow. “I’ve read of such
things in books.”
“Then he’ll be stuck up,” declared Joe Appleby.
This opinion was delivered with a shake of the head that seemed to
intimate that Joe had known all the ways of boarding-scholars for
thousands of years; so most of the boys looked quite sober for a moment
or two. Finally Sam Wardwell, whose father kept a store, broke the
silence by remarking, “I’ll bet he’s from Boston; his coat is of just
the same stuff as one that a drummer wears who comes to see father
sometimes.”
“Umph!” grunted Appleby; “do you suppose Boston has some kinds of cloth
all to itself? _You_ don’t know much.”
The smaller boys seemed to side with the senior pupil in this opinion;
so Sam felt very uncomfortable, and vowed silently that he would bring a
piece of chalk to school that very afternoon, and do some rapid
sketching on the back of Appleby’s own coat. Then Benny Mallow said:
“Say, boys, this old school must be a pretty good one, after all, if
people somewhere else send boarders to it. His folks must be rich: did
you notice what a splendid knife he cut his finger-nails with?—’twas a
four-blader, with a pearl handle. But of course you didn’t see it, and I
did; he used it in school, and my desk is right beside his.”
Will Palmer immediately led Benny aside, and offered him a young
fan-tail pigeon, when his long-expected brood was hatched, to change
desks, if the teacher’s permission could be obtained. Meanwhile Napoleon
Nott, who generally was called Notty, and who had more imagination than
all the rest of the boys combined, remarked, “I believe he’s a foreign
prince in disguise.”
“He’s well-bred, anyhow,” said Will Palmer to Benny Mallow. “I hope
he’ll be man enough to stand no nonsense. He’s big enough, and smart
enough, if looks go for anything, to run this school, and I’d like to
see him do it—anything to get rid of Joe Appleby’s airs.”
Then the various groups separated, moved by the appetites that boys in
good health always have. One boy, however—Joe Appleby—was man enough to
deny his palate when greater interests devolved upon him, so he made
some excuse to go back to the school-room, so as to be there when the
teacher and his new charge returned. Half an hour later Benny Mallow,
who had sneaked away from home as soon as the dessert had been brought
in, and had vulgarly eaten his pie as he walked along the street—Benny
Mallow walked into the school-room, and beheld the teacher, Joe Appleby,
and Paul Grayson standing together as if they had been talking. As Benny
went to his seat Joe followed him, and bestowed upon him a look of such
superiority that Benny determined at once that some marvellous mystery
must have been revealed, and that Joe was the custodian of the entire
thing. Benny was so full of this fancy that he slipped down-stairs and
told it as fact to each boy who appeared, the result being to make Joe
Appleby a greater man than ever in the eyes of the school, while Grayson
became a tormenting yet most invaluable mystery.