I suppose if I should tell you I had had a whipping you would feel
sorry. Well, don’t feel sorry. I will begin at the beginning.
We can’t go out evenings. But last Monday evening one of the teachers
said I might go after my overjacket that I took off to play ball, and
left hanging over a fence. It was a very light night. I had to go down a
long lane to get where it was; and when I got there, it wasn’t there.
The moon was shining bright as day. Old Gapper Skyblue lives down that
lane. He raises rabbits. He keeps them in a hen-house.
Now I will tell you what some of the great boys do sometimes. They steal
eggs and roast them. There is a fireplace in Tom Cush’s room. Once they
roasted a pullet. The owners have complained so that the master said he
would flog the next boy that robbed a hen-house or an orchard, before
the whole school.
Now I will go on about my overjacket. While I was looking for it I heard
a queer noise in the rabbit-house. So I jumped over. Then a boy popped
out of the rabbit-house and ran. I knew him in a minute, for all he ran
so fast,--Tom Cush.
[Illustration]
Now when he started to run, something dropped out of his hand. I went up
to it, and ’t was a rabbit, a dead one, just killed; for when I stooped
down and felt of it, it was warm. And while I was stooping down, there
came a great heavy hand down on my shoulder. It was a man’s great heavy
hand.
Gapper had set a man there to watch. He hollered into my ears, “Now I’ve
got you!” I hollered, too, for he came sudden, without my hearing.
“You little thief!” says he.
“I didn’t kill it,” says I.
“You little liar!” says he.
“I’m not a liar,” says I.
“I’ll take you to the master,” says he.
“Take me where you want to,” says I.
Then he pulled me along, and kept saying, “Who did, if you didn’t? If
you didn’t, who did?”
And he walked me straight up into the master’s room, without so much as
giving a knock at the door.
“I’ve brought you a thief and a liar,” says he. Then he told where he
found me, and what a bad boy I was. Then he went away, because the
master wanted to talk with me all by myself.
Now I didn’t want to tell tales of Tom, for it’s mean to tell tales. So
all I could say was that I didn’t do it.
The master looked sorry. Said he was afraid I had begun to go with bad
boys. “Didn’t I see you walking in the lane with Tom Cush yesterday?”
says he. I said I was helping him find his ball. And so I was.
“If you were with the boys who did this,” said he, “or helped about it
in any way, that’s just as bad.”