redoubtable desperadoes more than the united exertions of Pat and the
donkey. They flew towards the village as if hounded by demons, and were
speedily out of sight and earshot.
But where was Stephen! On the impulse of the moment he also took to
his heels; but when he reached the fence his native courage and honor
returned. He stopped, sighed profoundly, and nervously broke a splinter
off a loose rail. He did not know whether this splinter would be of any
service to him, but he mechanically carried it in his hand as he slunk
back to the well. There he sank down in a heap, and awaited Mr. Jackson’s
coming with much perturbation. However, he retained sufficient presence
of mind to pluck a tawdry feather out of his hat band, and then set the
hat fairly on his head. Wretched trickster! he did not consider how dusk
it was, or that Mr. Jackson would probably be more concerned about the
donkey than about a rattle-pated schoolboy’s headgear.
Now, if ever, he should have indulged in laughter, for the scene was
risible in the extreme. Ah! if he had been an innocent bystander, he
would have overnoised even Pat and the donkey. Alas! he felt his guilt,
and was more inclined to cry than to laugh.
“Oh,” he groaned, “why did I mix myself with such a pack of nasty little
cowards? I knew all the time that I had no business to meddle with that
ass. Ass?--why, I’ve made an ass of myself! Where will it all end, and
what will Mr. Jackson say to me or do with me?--Well,” with a sigh of
relief, “there’s one good thing: the ass will be let loose again!”
Stephen’s gloomy surmises were cut short by Jackson himself. “What does
all this mean, you scoundrel?” he roared. “What are you doing here? Where
are those boys? have they all gone and left you?”
At that instant another hideous bray, followed by a moan of mortal
terror, reverberated in the well, and the new-comer turned and looked in.
A boisterous laugh burst from his lips when he discerned the occupants of
the well. “Oh! this is rich!” he exclaimed, so jubilantly that Stephen
was stupified with amazement.
Encouraged by Mr. Jackson’s merriment, timorous Pat began with redoubled
energy. “It’s him! I hain’t done nothin’; so don’t tetch me, Mr.
Jackson, for I ain’t had nothin’ to do with it. Lemme go, _please_!”
Turning to Stephen, Jackson again demanded an explanation. Stephen did
not give a “succinct account of the whole proceeding;” but Jackson
gathered from his faltering confession that a trick lay at the bottom of
the affair.
“Yes, I understand it all,” Jackson replied; “but I don’t see your
motive. Well, little boy, I might put you to considerable inconvenience;
but it’s so capital a joke--so deep, so surprising, so silly--that I will
let you off. The grudge I owe Lawrence is paid now; paid in full.”
This last expression was probably not intended for Steve’s ears; but he
overheard it, and asked, with a start, “What about Mr. Lawrence, sir?”
“‘Lawrence,’ eh? Nothing about him; except that _he_ must settle with
you. That’s one reason why I’m letting you off. Yes, just take your bill
and your story to him; for its his place to deal with you.”
“I--I don’t know what you mean,” Steve made answer, becoming more and
more perplexed.
“I see that we don’t understand each other very well. _I_ don’t know
_why_ you put his donkey into this well; and _you_ don’t know--well,
what? You seem puzzled about something; but when I refer the matter to
Mr. Lawrence, I think you’ll find that he will understand it well enough
to send for a magistrate. Then come a lawsuit and all sorts of good
things.”
When a youthful offender or an ignorant person was the object of his
resentment, this man loved to enlarge on the terrors of the law; but when
he himself was the culprit, he shrank from the bare mention of the word.
“_His_ donkey, did you say?” Steve said, utterly confounded. “Oh! please
to tell me what you mean!”
“I mean what I’m talking about. You know, of course, the donkey in that
well belongs to Mr. Lawrence; you know, of course, he pastures both
donkeys in this field, which is leased to me. He will show you that
you can’t make a plaything of his donkeys, and to-morrow you will be
wanted. If this maltreated beast belonged to me, I would have ample
satisfaction!” savagely.
“I see your mates have left you,” he continued. “Well, I hope you will
enjoy yourself here with the donkeys. I should like to stop and see
the sport; but I can’t, I must go on. You had better haul the donkey
out--if you can. Of course, _I’ve_ no time to help you; and it’s no
concern of mine, anyway; so, good night! Hurrah! your rope is out of your
reach! This is an interesting case indeed! Well, you and your little
friend there can amuse yourselves by endeavoring to adjust matters. You
won’t be entirely alone; for the quadrupeds grazing in this field will
occasionally come and gape at you. The moon will soon be up; appeal to
it!”
Then, with a mocking bow, he turned on his heel and made off, leaving
Stephen alone with his troubles.
And this was the retaliation which Steve had planned so craftily! How
wretchedly his scheme had failed! Instead of imprisoning Jackson’s
donkey, he had imprisoned that of his friend Mr. Lawrence. Truly, here
was a case that called for many interjections--for more, in fact, than
hapless Steve could muster.
And he had been detected in the very act. What would be the consequences?
Would those dark threats of Jackson’s be put into execution? What
penalties might the law inflict on him? What did the LAW say about
feloniously dumping another man’s donkey into a disused well, anyway?
Alas! Steve did not know.
But, oh! comforting thought! Jackson plainly did not suspect anybody
of playing a trick on _him_. And it was well for Stephen that it was
so, as a suspicion of the truth would have stirred up the waspish old
blusterer’s fury.
“O dear!” groaned Steve, “I wish I was at home! I wish I hadn’t done it!
I wish--O dear! Well, I will never have anything more to do with those
mean sneaks. Why couldn’t they have stuck by me? Now they’ll go and
spread it all over, and what will people think of me? What will become of
me? Well, I shall be laughed at for a month, that’s very certain.”
This doleful soliloquy manifests that Stephen was but a boy, and
that he was but human. A man’s great care is (or should be) to guard
his reputation: a boy’s great care is to keep from becoming a
laughing-stock. This is a bug-bear which haunts him (the boy) from the
day when masculine apparel is first girded on him, and which prompts him
to do many things that, to his elders, are foolish and incomprehensible.
It is for this reason that a well-organized boy, however learned he may
be, prefers to use simple words of Anglo-Saxon origin, when he knows he
could make his meaning clearer by using Latin polysyllables.
But Steve’s disquieting speculations were interrupted by Pat, who
whispered warily, “Is he gone?”
Now, Steve did not know that this is a polite expression, and he answered
snappishly, “Yes, he _has_ gone.”
This was good news to little Pat. Forgetting that he had just been
accusing Stephen to Mr. Jackson, he began beseechingly: “Lemme out,
Steve! Lemme out, that’s a good boy. I al’ays knowed you was a good boy,
Steve, didn’t I? Lemme out now, and I’ll do anythin’ fur you.”
This reminded Stephen of the labor that lay before him. How was he to get
hold of the rope? The one could not climb up the sides of the well; the
other could not climb down; all the cords were bound on the ass.
However, Stephen searched his pockets carefully, and lighted on a new
and strong fish-line, with a fish-hook affixed. The fish-line was
not long enough to reach down to Pat; but by noosing the end to one
of the handspikes that difficulty was removed. There was now direct
communication between the two boys. Pat was rather fidgety when he saw
the fish-hook dangling under his nose, but he caught it fast to the rope,
which Stephen carefully and fearfully drew up.
If that fish line had parted, those boys and the writer would have been
placed in a sorry plight.
The rope was no sooner made fast than Pat scrambled up it, caught up his
shabby coat, and exercised his limbs of locomotion so nimbly that he was
nearly out of sight before Steve could recover from his amazement. This
was a whimsical way of manifesting gratitude!
“How he scampers!” Steve muttered. “What a pack of little wretches, and
what a mean man Jackson is! I wanted to slide down into the well myself;
and those boys know I agreed to let Pat do it on purpose to please him.
Well, I’ve done with ragamuffins!--I say,” he bellowed to the nimble
runaway, “you needn’t run so fast; _I_ don’t want you: you’re no good,
anyway.”
Pat knew that Stephen longed for his help; he knew that a boy, when left
in the lurch, speaks somewhat as Stephen had spoken, and yet Pat hurried
on.
Poor Pat! he was not aware that his unique and valued button ring, the
fruit of several hours’ toil with boiling water, a broken-bladed knife,
and a spoilt file, had been fractured in the well. Unconscious of his
loss, he clapped his hands over his mouth, and bleated playfully and
hideously.
Stephen now racked his brains to hit upon some feasible plan of taking
the donkey out of the well. Suddenly a happy thought struck him. His eyes
sparkled with joy. “My stars!” he exclaimed, “I see the very way to do
it! I can manage it after all.”
Then he mused on Jackson’s behavior, and another thought occurred to him.
“I suppose he believed I couldn’t get either of ’em out of the well. Yes,
of course he did; and he thought I should have to go to the village for
help. And then I wonder if he’d have set the magistrate and folks after
me! Ten to one. Well, I can beat ’em all, and keep out of trouble, too.”
Yes, that was the point. If he had been necessitated to seek help, he
would have been taught a wholesome lesson; but when his own precocity
suggested a way out of the difficulty, he was only hardened in his
mischievousness, and he admired his great cleverness.
Without further deliberation the deserted and frustrated avenger slid
down the rope, took the halter and a few straps off the donkey, coiled
them around his own neck, and then clambered up.
This was a foolhardy thing for him to do; for if the fastenings of the
rope had given way, he and the donkey world have been left to their own
resources. But the generality of boys delight in doing such things. With
a careless “I’ll risk it,” they rush headlong into danger, day after day.
Then Steve set about carrying his plans into effect. He sidled up to the
other donkey and chased it over the pasturage till the moon rose. This
was weary work for him, but at length he caught the donkey, slipped the
halter over its head, and led--or rather coaxed--it up to the well.
“Well, old fellow,” he said, addressing his first captive, “I didn’t make
any preparations to haul you out, but so much the better. Now, keep your
mouth shut, and don’t be afraid, and you’ll be kicking around this field
before no time. Now, heave away, boys! Ho! Heave ’er!”
He then pitched on the two lightest planks, exerted all his remaining
strength, and placed them so as to form a floor or platform, extending
from the transverse bars of his engine to the curb of the well. Thus half
the well’s mouth was covered.
Next, the donkey last caught was hitched to the rope, and by dint of
entreaty, induced to draw its yoke-fellow out of the gloomy prison.
“Saved!” cried Stephen, in tragic accents, as he turned both donkeys
loose. “Saved! And I have saved you!”
And then he fell to turning summersets, chuckling, and disporting himself
like a noodle. “_Oh! this is fun!_” he said.
A heavy fall brought the boy to his senses; and without more ado he
gathered up his belongings and began to whistle “Yankee Doodle,” as only
a boy whose conscience is tranquillized can whistle it.
The would-be avenger had expended so much of his strength that he was not
in a condition to attempt to replace the rest of the planks, or to carry
home his beloved pulley.
“Mr. Jackson may arrange those planks himself,” he muttered. “As for the
pulley--well,” with a last fond backward glance, “I suppose he’ll knock
it up into kindling-wood.”
It was late when Stephen reached home that night. Notwithstanding his
proneness to be mischievous and to play monkey tricks, he was free from
deceit and he was not deficient in moral courage. As soon as he and his
mother were alone, he made a clean breast of it, then walked off to bed,
with tears in his eyes, but loving his mother better than ever.
Although Mr. Jackson, while returning through the field that night,
should have precipitated himself into the half-open well, there to perish
miserably, yet he did not. The writer does not thirst for the blood of
his villains; but--lest he should be accounted utterly devoid of common
sense--the following statement is offered, by way of consolation, for the
punctilious readers perusal:--
Whilst replacing the planks, which were permeated with humidity, he
contracted a catarrhal cold, which did not yield to the apothecary’s
patent medicines till the next spring.
When Mr. Lawrence heard the particulars of Stephen’s prank, and the
“motive,” he laughed heartily.
Of course the peace-officers did not gain or lose by the affair; and
Steve observed oracularly, “I knew he was only fooling. He didn’t scare
me a bit!”
It is not necessary to waste time in tracing Jackson’s career further--in
fact, as he never annoyed our heroes again, he may as well be formally
thrown overboard now.
It was hoped that this experience would have a wholesome and lasting
effect on Stephen. Alas, no! Stephen Goodfellow was one of the many
irrepressible incorrigibles that flourish in this country.
_Chapter VII._
THE YOUNG MORALIST.--A CLEVER SCHEME.
As the school was now closed for “summer holidays,” the boys were free to
do whatever they pleased.
One bright forenoon the heroic six, full of merry jokes, set out on a
stroll to the woods. Charles and Will led the way, and _why_ they made
for the woods will be seen further on.
“Now, boys,” said Charley, “wouldn’t it be fun if we should have a
real adventure to-day? something romantic; something worth while--eh,
Marmaduke?”
Marmaduke’s eyes flashed like a persecuted hero’s whose case appears
hopeless. However, he did nothing desperate, he simply said, “Boys, some
day or another we shall light on something romantic--something awful!
I’ve always felt it. Then we will pry into the mystery until we unravel
it.”
Will, Charles, and Stephen, furtively exchanged glances. If their designs
should succeed, Marmaduke would have a mystery to pry into sooner than he
bargained for.
Just as they entered the woods they heard voices; and on looking about
they caught sight of three little boys sitting astride of a decayed log.
One seemed to have a paper of raisins, from which he was helping himself
and the other two.
“Hush!” Charley whispered. “They haven’t seen us yet; so hide behind the
bushes, and I’ll play a pretty trick on them.”
Without the least hesitation, without looking to see whether they were
sitting on grass or thorns, they crouched down. Charley “knew himself,”
and the boys obeyed him promptly.
Seeing that they were all concealed, he advanced boldly towards the three
small boys.
“Hollo, Tim!” he exclaimed. “What have you got there?”
“Raisins,” Tim answered laconically.
“Where did you get them?” was the next question.
“Maw sent me fur ’em.”
“Oh, I thought so. Now I can go to work,” Charley muttered, in a
theatrical “aside.”
“What do you want of me, and what are you a-saying to yourself?” demanded
Tim, becoming questioner in his turn.
“I’ll give you a whistle for one of them, Tim,” Charley said, so eagerly
that the boys in hiding wondered. Why should such a boy as Charley
wish to purchase a single raisin? Was _this_ a mystery? It seemed so
mysterious that they pricked up their ears, and impatiently waited for
further developments.
Tim’s thoughts are unknown. He replied indifferently, “Well, if your
whistle’s a good one, I guess I don’t mind; but I’ve give these here boys
so many raisins that Maw’ll think that there new store-keeper cheats
worse’n the old ones. Let’s see yer whistle, anyway.”
Charles turned his back to Tim, and searched his pockets for the whistle,
a scrap of paper, and a forlorn lead pencil that had once done duty as
the bullet of a popgun. Having found these articles, he scrawled a few
words on the scrap of paper.
“Can’t you find the whistle?” Tim inquired unsuspectingly.
“I’m coming,” was the answer.
Then the gaping ambushed five saw him slip the battered pencil into his
pocket, take the paper in one hand and the whistle in the other, and step
briskly up to Tim.
Tim reached out the bag, and Charley ran his hand which secreted the
paper far into it. Then he drew out his hand--empty.
“No, Tim,” he said, “I think you have given away enough already. But
here’s the whistle, all the same. Now, run home, like a good boy.”
Young Tim tried his whistle somewhat doubtfully, for he was at a loss to
know why it should be given to him for nothing. Big boys did not make a
practice of throwing away good whistles on him, unless they looked for
some return. Generosity so lavish astounded him.
But the first toot assured him of the soundness of the gift; a smile of
pleasure flitted over his grimy face; and he exclaimed joyously, “Man!
It’s bully, ain’t it?”
“Oh, it’s a good one,” Charley averred.
“I--I was afraid p’r’aps it was busted,” Tim acknowledged.
Then young Tim rose to his feet and wended his way homeward, piping
melodiously on his whistle, unconscious of the bomb-shell hidden in the
bag; while hard behind him, licking their daubed lips as they went,
trotted the two parasitical boys who had been junketing on his mother’s
raisins.
Charley, grinning and chuckling, hurried back to his comrades.
“I hope I’ve taught that thieving little sneak-thief a lesson he will
remember,” he said, with a smile intended to be exceedingly moral.
“Why, what did you do? What on earth’s the matter? Tell us all about it,”
cried a chorus of voices; “we could see something was up, but we didn’t
know what.”
“Well, boys,” Charles began, “I have often caught that rascal feeding
little boys, and big ones, too, from parcels of raisins, sugar, and other
things; and I thought I would make him smart for it some day. So to-day,
when I saw him at it again, I thought of writing something on a scrap of
paper, and getting a chance to slip it into his bag. You saw me do that,
perhaps. What I wrote was, ‘O, mother! please to forgive me! I stole your
raisins and things, but I won’t do it no more.’ When his mother empties
out the raisins, she will find that, and it will be enough for her. Then
she’ll put two and two together, and then, most likely, she’ll put Tim
and his skate-straps together. That is all, boys.”
“Good for you, Buffoon!” exclaimed Stephen, to whom this knavish trick
was highly amusing. “Mr. Tim will ‘pay dear for his whistle’ this
time--unless your confession should slip out of the bag!”
“No, I put it down nearly to the bottom,” Charley replied. “He won’t be
likely to open his bag again, either, for he has eaten and given away
about half of the raisins.”
“I say, boys,” said Stephen, “isn’t that what they call _philanthropy_?”
“What?” Charles asked eagerly.
“Teaching a boy that it’s wicked to steal.”
“No; it’s the vice of perfidy!” George replied, so promptly that a keen
observer would have said, “This boy is impelled by envy; he wishes he had
been guilty of the same vice.”
But George was in the right; Charley’s trick was inhumanly treacherous.
“Did you intend to take one of his raisins?” Jim faltered, a wolfish look
in his eyes.
Charles’ lips curled with disdain; his nostrils dilated; virtuous
indignation strove for utterance. But he knew that he could not look
so injured that the boy would hang his head in shame; so he resolved to
annihilate him by a single word. To gain time to hit on an expression
sufficiently awful, he demanded threateningly:
“What do you mean, Sir?”
Jim’s nerves were always weak, and this jeering question so unstrung
them that he spoke the first words that occurred to him. (By the way,
the phrase was a favorite one of his, one that he used on all occasions;
and according to the tone in which he said it, it implied either doubt,
indifference, petulance, fear, or _profanity_!)
“I don’t know, I’m sure,” is what he said.
“You hadn’t better!” Stephen thundered with lowering brow.
The reason why Steve espoused Charley’s cause so readily was because the
boys still teased him about the donkey; and he rejoiced to find that
another--that other his schoolfellow Charles--could be guilty of the
misdemeanor of playing tricks. Truly, the abusive adage, “Misery loves
company,” is right.
“It is bad enough for the store-keeper to handle the poor woman’s
raisins; and Charley’s fingers don’t look so clean as a store-keeper’s,
even;” George observed tauntingly.
“I guess Charley’s fingers are cleaner than Tim’s” retorted Stephen,
always eager to play the part of champion to some aggrieved wight,
especially so now.
But Charles perceived that his joke was not appreciated as it should
have been; and he turned beseechingly to Will, his firm upholder in all
things. “Will,” he said, “what do _you_ think about it? Did I do wrong?”
Thus appealed to, Will made answer: “Capital joke, Charley; but you have
begun your career as a reformer rather early in life.”
This did not satisfy Charley, and he took to his last expedient.
When a renowned general becomes entangled in a snare which he himself
has spread; when he is caricatured and lampooned in all the newspapers,
and without a friend in all the world, he makes an impassioned and
well-punctuated declamation in his defence, in which he sums up
the difficulties that lay in his way so eloquently; sets forth the
rightfulness of his cause so manfully; represents the disinterestedness
of his actions so carefully; discourses on the purity of his designs
so volubly; harrows up the feelings of the audience, and the disguised
editors so subtly; exposes the fallacies under which his defamers labor
so jocosely; and reiterates his asservations so persistingly, that all
except the most malevolent and perverse are brought to coincide with his
views.
Charles was now “on his defence.”
“‘The end justifies the means,’ you know. Now,--”
“That’s what the Jesuits profess, and they are--” George interrupted.
But, not knowing exactly what the Jesuits are, he stopped short, and
Charley went on without further interruption.
“Now, that Tim was a rascal, but this will reclaim him. He has been
cheating his mother on a small scale for more than a year. She has sent
him to all the different stores for her groceries, but with the same
results. He is the only one she has to send, and he has a chance to
steal at his leisure. Now, if I had informed her that her son does the
cheating, what would have become of me? Ten to one, she would have called
me a sneaking talebearer, and told me to march off home and get my father
to belabor me. As it is, _Tim_ will probably get the drubbing. There now,
wasn’t my ‘confession’ plan just the thing? Of course it was. You boys
must be blind, or crazy, or silly.”
No oratory here, gentle reader. But the speaker was only a boy; if he had
been older and more experienced, he would not have omitted to remark,
incidentally, that he had acted “on the impulse of the moment.”
However, his reasoning, especially the latter part of it, was conclusive.
“Quite right;” said all the boys. Then, as time is _very_ precious to a
schoolboy during the holidays, Stephen added, “Now let us go on; we’ve
fooled away too much time doing nothing.”
Will and Charles taking the lead, the explorers advanced deeper into the
woods; and taking an obscure pathway, soon found themselves in a quarter
scarcely known to some of the boys. Heaps of brush-wood blocked up the
way, making their progress very slow. But this only exhilarated their
adventurous spirit; and they tore through the brush with smiling contempt
for sundry bruises and scratches.
All except George, whose mind was still exercised about Charley’s “vice,”
and who took no interest in squeezing through underwood, and stumbling
over heaps of loose and rough brush-wood.