Sunk in bewilderment that one so wise and powerful as his father should
be so distressed, the boy seemed to lose the sense of what was taking
place around him. But he was recalled to it with a start of dismay;
his father was about to leave the room. Involuntarily he turned to the
door also, and placed his hand on his father’s arm.
“Do you forget that you are now at school, Achilles?” said his father
in a low voice.
The boy could not repress a little quiver of fear.
“You--you are not going to forsake me, my father!” he said.
“What of the resolve you took last night?” said his father. “By whose
act is it, beloved one, that you have come to school?”
A vague sense of darkness seemed to close about the boy.
“But our little room,” he said, shivering. “Am I never to return to it,
my father? Am I never to behold it again?”
“I make you my promise, beloved one,” said his father softly. “At dusk
I will return to take you there.”
Furtively, mournfully the boy relaxed his grip of his father’s hand.
In the next instant he realized that his father was gone, and that he
was alone with the dumb immensity of his despair. All about him was
black and vague. Yet in the midst of the close-pressing stillness sat
the school-master, a venerable and silent form, slowly ruling lines in
a ciphering-book. How old, noble, and patient he looked!
Presently the aged master ceased from his labours. He gathered a pile
of books, rose and placed them under his arm. He turned to the boy, who
was weeping secretly, and said, “Dry your eyes and come with me.”
Filled with nameless misgivings, the boy followed the school-master out
through the door, along a passage, and down a flight of stone stairs.
At the bottom of these was another door. It opened into a large room,
which was full of youthful street-persons, and a great clamour.
The master took his seat at a table apart. It was somewhat higher than
the desks at which the youthful street-persons were seated. He told
the boy, who followed very close upon his heels, to sit at his side.
The entrance of the aged master appeared to have an effect upon the
behaviour of his scholars, or perhaps the appearance in his wake of a
new companion had engaged their curiosity. But the boy, trembling in
every limb, was far from returning their bold glances. He sat close
by the master, mutely craving protection from the fierce horde that
was all about him. Had he been led into a den of wild beasts, his fear
could not have been more extreme.
The tasks of the day were begun by each of the boys reading aloud
in his turn a brief portion of Holy Writ. To him, who heard their
voices for the first time, they sounded harsh, strange, and uncouth.
Most of them faltered and grew confused at the easiest words, in none
were sincerity and coherence; and when the master, to sustain one who
was baffled, recited a few verses, his tones, in their sweetness and
dignity, sounded like music. Sometimes the master would remark upon the
beauty and truth of that which was read, or he would pause to furnish a
parallel out of common experience, in order to elucidate an incident as
it was narrated.
The presence of this gentle and learned man, the continual sense that
he was near, began to soothe the boy’s tremors. And the beautiful
language seemed to gird him with the sense of a new and enkindling
security. But his terror returned upon him with overmastering power
when the moment came in which he was asked personally to continue the
theme. The whole of it had long been so familiar to him that he carried
every word in his heart, yet when the call was made upon him to recite
that for which he required no book, he was so much oppressed with the
nameless dread of his surroundings that he could only gasp and burst
into tears.
After all the boys had done their tasks after their own private
fashion, the master read to them a fable, which the boy recognized
gratefully as an old friend out of the ancient authors; also a
wonderful tale from similar sources, and a few passages from the life
of a great national hero.
The boy was enchanted. The simplicity of the reading made him strangely
happy; the themes addressed him with a ravishment he had never felt
before. And the horde of fierce creatures all about him, indulging in
grimaces and covert horseplay, seemed also to become amenable to this
delight. At least their uneasy roughness grew less as the beautiful
voice proceeded; and by the time these stories of wonder, wisdom and
endeavour were at an end, even the rudest among them had wide eyes and
open mouths.
Upon the conclusion of these tales the old school-master wrote a few
cabalistic figures on a board, and then said to the boy, “Can you do
sums?”
“I--I--I--I d-don’t t-think I--I k-know, sir,” said the boy, stammering
timorously.
“Perhaps we will test your knowledge,” said the old man, and added
as he smiled in a secret and beautiful manner, “there is one simple
question in arithmetic that it is the custom to put to a new scholar on
his first appearance among us. Can you tell us what two and two make?”
Now, although the boy was advanced in book-knowledge far beyond his
years, he had hardly the rudiments of the practical sciences. Therefore
at first he was unable to answer the most primitive of all questions
therein, and his confusion was great. And the other boys who had heard
this question, which was so simple as to seem ridiculous, observed his
distress with a scorn that was far too lofty to conceal.
“What would you say that two and two make?” the school-master asked.
“I--I--I think, sir, they m-make five,” stammered the boy at last.
A shout of laughter arose from the other boys at this grotesque answer.
“He thinks two and two make five!” boy after boy could be heard
repeating to his companions; “he thinks two and two make five!”
The aged school-master, however, derived neither amusement nor scorn
from this answer. His look was one of high yet grave happiness as he
said, “We give a special name to each of our boys, and I have been
wondering what name to bestow upon you. The name of your father was
Isocrates--one of great gifts, but timorous of disposition; but I think
you must be known by the name of a universal hero. We will call you by
the name of Achilles, who was the bravest among all the Greeks.”
At these words of the master looks of consternation clouded the faces
of all the boys.
“Why, sir, he is a dunce,” expostulated a thoughtful and shrewd boy
with piercing black eyes.
The aged master looked at this boy with a mild indulgence in his smile.
“Adamantus,” said the master, “that is a condition necessary to a
universal hero in his youth.”
Adamantus, who was one of the first boys in the school, was far from a
comprehension of this dark saying; yet he felt himself to be rebuked,
without knowing to what extent or why he should be. But shortly
afterwards, when the play-hour came, and they ran out to indulge in
their games in the small London garden, some of the older and graver
boys, of whom Adamantus was one of the chief, stood apart to discuss
what they were bound to consider an act of notorious partiality on
the part of the master. That a mere small boy, a weak and foolish boy
should be decorated with a much-coveted name for returning a ridiculous
answer was one of those frank injustices that they felt obliged to
resent.
“Adamantus only means that I am a bit of a sticker at my books, which I
don’t think I am really,” said the bearer of that name; “and who ever
heard of Polycrates and Polydames?”
“Yes, it is not fair,” said the bearer of the last of these names; “but
then, he is an old fool. He is just an old dodderer.”
When the boys had gone forth to the garden, the master said to his new
pupil, “Will you not go out and make their acquaintance, Achilles?”
For answer the boy clasped his fingers about the master’s sleeve. He
had grown dumb with terror.
“So be it,” said the old man, regarding him with pity and concealed
tenderness.
A little while afterwards the boy rose suddenly of his own motion from
the master’s table.
“Where are you going, Achilles?” said the master.
“I--I am g-going, s-sir, to the garden to the boys,” he stammered.
As he walked out through the door his gaunt cheeks were like death.
He crept into the garden with the greatest caution and secrecy. He
hardly dared to breathe lest he should be heard, he feared to move lest
he should be seen. Crouching against the wall, moving neither foot nor
hand, he longed to stop the motions of his heart. They were so loud
that he felt they were bound to be noticed.
His fears proved to be well founded. A tall, heavy, puffy boy with
vivid red hair came near. He was trying to kick the cap of another
boy, who was much smaller than himself, over the wall. By an odd
misadventure one of these attempts landed it full in the face of the
trembling intruder.
“Hullo, New Boy!” said the boy with red hair.
He gave the cap a final kick, which lifted it among the branches of the
only tree the garden contained. He then turned his attention to his
important discovery. He moistened his lips with his tongue, and gave an
anticipatory leer to the figure that shrank away from him.
“New Boy,” he said, “what is your name?”
“I--I d-don’t t-think I know, sir,” the boy stammered.
“D-don’t t-think you know your name, New Boy,” said the boy with red
hair, with polite deprecation. “How odd!”
Almost as quick as thought the boy with red hair took the boy’s arm in
what seemed to be the grip of a giant and twisted it ferociously. The
boy gave a little yelp of agony and stupefaction.
“D-doesn’t t-that help you to remember your name, New Boy?” said the
boy with red hair persuasively. As he spoke he pressed his face so
close to that of the quivering thing in his grasp that he almost rubbed
the gaunt cheek with his blunt and freckled nose.
The boy hung mute and limp with terror.
“L-lost y-your tongue, New Boy?” said the boy with red hair. “Or
perhaps you haven’t lost it really?”
The arm that was still in the grip of the giant received another such
twist that a wild shriek was heard all over the garden.
The cry brought other boys crowding to the scene. They were of diverse
ages and sizes, they were of various tempers and complexions, but one
and all were animated by the same critical curiosity. Among them was
a boy, who, although far more robust of physique, was slightly less
in inches than he who cowered away from their eyes. He measured him
carefully with his eye, and, seeming to derive an ampler power from
such gross terror, turned to his companions with a swelling air, as if
to enforce the fact that in stature he was somewhat the less of the
two, and said, “I think I ought to be able to hit him.”
With chin borne loftily, with each step taken firmly yet delicately,
and with an air of dauntlessness which affected not to be in the least
conscious of the approval such a deed was bound to excite in the minds
of the intelligent, this boy approached, and at his leisure struck the
new boy in the face with his clenched fist as hard as he could.
A little afterwards the ringing of a bell summoned all the boys indoors
to their books. The new boy crept back to his place at the master’s
table in a kind of swoon. For the remainder of that day any command
of the common faculties which, under happy conditions, he sometimes
enjoyed, was destroyed. He could hardly see, he could affix no meaning
to that which he heard; the functions of speech and memory were denied
to him altogether. Whenever the school-master left the room he followed
upon his heels from one place to another with the ridiculous docility
of a dumb animal.
At noon the mid-day meal was taken. Many of the scholars then adjourned
to a long table in another room, but as the master followed them the
boy kept ever by his side. An old woman who cut the food, and who
seemed to wield great authority, said to him in a harsh voice, which
made him tremble, “You have no right to sit there. Down there at the
bottom is the place for new boys.”
“No,” said the master, “let him sit with me.”
During the meal the boy ate no food. When, having declined to touch a
robust helping of meat, he also rejected an even more liberal serving
of pudding, the old woman said to him roughly, “You must have a proud
stomach if it refuses good food.”
After the meal he followed in the steps of the master wherever he went,
until the hour came to re-enter the school-room to renew the tasks of
the day. Many were the fierce and scornful eyes that were directed upon
him as again he took his seat at the master’s table; yet of these he
was not conscious, for he had no knowledge of what was happening about
him.
About the hour the shadows of the dismal November afternoon grew so
oppressive that it became necessary to light the gas, he saw the form
of his father in the door. He gave a little convulsed cry, threw
his arms round his father’s neck, and buried his face in his coat.
His father and the aged master looked at one another without saying
anything.
The boy and his father journeyed home on the top of an omnibus. On
another occasion such a proceeding would have filled him with a high
sense of adventure, but now all the life seemed to have passed out of
him. The horses and carts, their drivers, the shouting newsboys, the
seething crowds on the pavements, the flaring lights of the shops had
nothing to communicate. Yet, when he found himself again in the little
room, which he had left only a few brief hours, the sudden joy in
recovering that which he had felt to be lost for ever amounted almost
to delirium. It soon passed. It was followed by deep dejection, and a
sense of strange despair.
The hours of the long evening went very slowly. The ticking of the
clock had never seemed so loud and so deliberate. A feeling of
lassitude at last began to creep upon him, so that he leant his arms
on the table, and pressed his closed eyes upon them. Yet he was not
in the least weary, and felt no desire for sleep. His father asked no
questions in regard to the doings of the day.
At eight o’clock his father put up the shutters of the shop. It was his
habit to sit all day amid the books waiting for customers who seldom
came. That day not one had crossed the threshold.
When the hour arrived at which it was usual for the boy to go to bed,
he lighted his candle in a dull and mechanical way.
“I suppose, my father,” he said, “heroes do not crave for death?”
“Yes, Achilles,” said his father, “death is a guerdon they do not seek.”
His father accompanied him up the stairs as was his invariable custom
during the winter evenings, for he had not the courage to enter a dark
room alone. When the boy had sought sanctuary in his cold bed, his
father left him with the light burning at its fullest.
It was in the small hours of the morning when his father entered the
chamber again. The boy lay wide-eyed, with his head pillowed upon his
hands. He was gazing through the curtainless window at the bright
stars. Thus did he lie all night very cold and still, but at six
o’clock, when his father left his side to light the fire in the little
room and to clean out the shop, he had fallen into a light and troubled
rest. Later, when his father returned to bid him rise, he found that
sheer fatigue had at last overcome him, and that his broken sleep
had changed to a slumber that was deep and dreamless. It was only by
shaking that the boy could be induced to open his eyes.
“You will be late at the school, Achilles,” said his father.
The boy gave a little faint shiver, and for an instant he cowered among
the warm blankets in terror and dismay. In the next, however, he had
left his too-pleasant refuge. He clothed his tottering limbs, yet they
were so weak that he could hardly walk down the stairs. He took a deep
draught of milk, of the inferior London kind, and again accompanied his
father through the press of traffic to the house in the gloomy square.
Throughout the journey neither spoke.
The incidents of the day were much like those of the previous one,
except that his father and the aged master did not re-enact their
former interview. As on the day before, the boy sat at the master’s
table, and followed him wherever he went. The aged man continued to
show him much consideration, while his voice, as it became familiar to
the boy’s ears, seemed to grow even gentler and more melodious. Yet the
eyes of the boys who sat opposite seemed to grow increasingly scornful
and fierce.
The days passed with little change from this order. The boy’s pallor
deepened, and his cheeks grew more gaunt than when he entered the
school. Sometimes when he returned to the little room in the evening,
still in his father’s care, he would be so overcome with weariness that
he would lay his head on the table and fall asleep. He ate little; and
the previous brightness of his childhood, his frank and insatiable
curiosity, gave place to a settled air of lassitude, weariness and
dejection.
Once or twice upon returning to the little room he would appear to have
been invigorated by some incident of the day, which yet he did not
mention. On these infrequent occasions he would seem to have a little
appetite for his food, and he would read in some of the less familiar
of the ancient authors under his father’s guidance.
Sometimes when his father went to rest in the midnight hours he found
the boy kneeling at the side of the bed in his white gown. On one
occasion, when the boy was too overborne to take off his own clothes,
his father helped him to do so. In removing them his father observed
the right arm to be much swollen, and to be greatly bruised and
lacerated. His father affected not to notice its condition.
The boy was unfailing in his attendance at the school. Every morning
at the same hour he went forth in his father’s care; at the same
hour every evening he returned in the same vigilant custody. Days
grew into weeks, weeks grew into months, months into years, but the
intimacy of time, and increase in stature and understanding opened up
no intercourse with the other boys in the school. He still remained
one apart at the master’s table. The contemptuous disfavour with which
he was viewed upon his first entrance into their midst grew into a
tradition which all respected, so that even those who came after him,
who were his inferiors in years and stature and knowledge of books,
were only too eager to accept the verdict which had been passed upon
him. By this pious conformity they gained the freedom of their own
republic.
As the boy grew older his reading in the ancient authors became more
prolonged, more profound, and more various. The longer he spent at his
books, the more authors with whom he entered into an acquaintance, the
more was his curiosity inspired. The questions he put to his father in
the little room increased greatly in number and magnitude. Some were
so delicate that his father, although familiar with many authors in
many tongues, was fain to hesitate in his replies; yet, whenever he
was able, he would give an answer that was tempered, not to his own
experience, but to that of his questioner.
One evening, when the boy had been nearly two years at the school, he
asked his father, who observed that his eyes were much swollen with
tears recently shed, “When pain hurts us bitterly, my father, must we
still continue to praise the Most High?”
“Pain is a monitor whose zeal is sometimes a little excessive, beloved
one,” said his father.
“Is it our own incontinence, my father, that makes our fear so great?
There seems to be two opinions among these authors.”
“When nature is affronted,” said his father, “she utters protests that
all must heed. The wise do not shun her indignation, neither do they
court it; but, when they come to suffer it, they seek first for the
cause, and then for that which may remove it.”
“And having found the cause, my father, and also that which may remove
it, must they ever shrink from the task?”
“Never, Achilles,” said his father.
The boy rose from his chair at the table. His face was like death.
“Do you mind kneeling with me here, my father?” he said. “I seem to do
better when you are at my side.”
The boy and his father knelt together in the little room.
All that long night the boy never closed his eyes. He lay on his
pillow looking at the brightness of the stars. After a while he tossed
restlessly from side to side. His lips were parched; his cheeks burned;
his mind had an intolerable vivacity.
At the first faint streaks of dawn he staggered from his bed, dressed
his faint limbs, and crept down the stairs. Presently, when his father
rose, he found him sharpening upon a stone a large knife, which was
used for cutting bread. Observing the boy’s deadly white cheeks and
burning eyes, his father placed his hand on his shoulder, saying, “I
trust, Achilles, you are aware that there are remedies from which there
is no appeal.”
The face of the boy showed that no appeal was desired. He partook
neither of food nor drink at the frugal breakfast; and when his father,
as was his custom, made ready to accompany him to the school, he said,
“I think, my father, I must walk alone to-day. I am twelve years old
to-day.”
“As you will, Achilles,” said his father, as he replaced his hat on the
peg.
It was with the greatest difficulty that the boy reached the school.
He had a perfect acquaintance with every step of the way. The name of
every street was engraved in his memory in its proper sequence; he knew
by heart almost every tradesman’s sign; yet it was only by the aid
of others that he ever reached the school. When he came to the wide
crossings, where the traffic was endless, his courage deserted him,
and do what he would he had not the physical power to leave the kerb.
He remained upon the verge of the crossing for more than half-an-hour,
reduced to tears of dismay at his own futility, until an old woman
happened to observe him and led him across the street. No sooner had
he come to the other side, than, without venturing to thank her, he
started to run as fast as he could, pursued by an agony of shame.
Upon his arrival at the school he provided delight and astonishment
for his fellows by breaking down in those tasks in which his
proficiency had long been remarkable. At each fresh attempt he failed
the more miserably. From the first his skill in the classic authors had
been so great that it was thought by the others to be discreditable;
yet this morning they rejoiced to find that it had passed from him
altogether. When at last, in his humiliation, he burst into tears, they
raised a shout of laughter.
“The power will return to you, my dear Achilles,” said the aged
school-master softly. “It will be the greater for having been denied
you altogether.”
In the play-hour the others gathered round him with their taunts.
The heavy boy with red hair, who from the first day had shown the
greatest assiduity in beating him, said, as he winked at his laughing
companions, “Watch me tickle up the biggest dunce in the school.”
However, almost so soon as he advanced, with his ruthless hands
outspread, he recoiled with a cry of fear. His victim had suddenly
produced a large knife from his coat.
“If you make me cry out again,” said the boy, in a slow and quiet
voice, “it is my intention to kill you.”
All stood gaping with amazement and horror, and the boy’s face was
so strange that at first none ventured to come near him. At last the
oldest boy in the school, who was also the boldest, crept round behind
him cautiously, swooped upon him and pinioned his arms. There and then,
with the knife still in his hand, they dragged him into the presence of
the master.
The old man, very infirm and half blind as he was, could not understand
their clamour at first. But when that which had occurred was rendered
clear to him, he ordered every boy to his place. Then addressing the
heavy boy with red hair, he said, “Come to me, Enceladus.”
A deep silence, the fruit of curiosity, was maintained while this boy
lurched up to the master’s table. He wore a smirk of satisfaction upon
his face, as one who, unaccustomed to notoriety, has come to taste it
suddenly.
“Enceladus,” said the aged master, in so sorrowful a voice that it sank
into the hearts even of those who were accustomed to heed it least,
“you are rude and unmannerly. Take up your books and leave us. Never,
upon any pretext, must you come among us again.”
The boy with red hair, insensitive and slow-witted as he was, was as if
stunned by this public and totally unexpected humiliation.
“Why, sir,” he whimpered, “why, sir, it was not I who drew the knife.”
A burning sense of injustice caused the head boy of the school to rise
in his place. He it was who had pinioned the arms of him who had dared
to hold such a weapon.
“No, sir,” he cried, “it was not Enceladus who drew the knife; it was
Achilles.”
“Mnestheus,” said the aged master, addressing the head boy with a stern
melancholy that none had heard on his lips before, “you are declared
unworthy of that office to which you have been called. You also, here
and now, must go from among us, and never, Mnestheus, must you come
among us again.”
Silence and consternation fell upon all as their two companions, thus
excommunicated, passed for ever out of their midst.
From that hour the many wanton acts which had been practised upon
the boy were practised no more. In lieu of the fierce contempt with
which he had been previously regarded, they began to pay him a kind of
respect. This immunity from physical violence, which he enjoyed for the
first time, was even tinged with a kind of homage. It was in nowise due
to his extraordinary preeminence in books, but rather in spite of it,
for it was hard for such unworthy attainment to be condoned. Indeed,
this tolerance was extended to one who had dared to enter upon a course
that had not been possible to the boldest among them.
“Tell us, Achilles,” they demanded in excited tones, “did you intend
_really_ to use the knife?”
“Y-yes,” stammered the boy, as the blood fled from his cheeks; “h-had I
b-been m-made to cry out again, I had buried the knife to the hilt in
his heart.”
From this time forth it was remarkable how one who had been deficient
in every quality which permits a human creature to dwell among his
kind upon equal terms, began to acquire an ascendency over them.
His physical shortcomings seemed to grow less apparent. His timid
disposition, whose extravagant fear of others had made him their prey,
now grew amenable to a new faculty which was suddenly born within him.
He who had been despised as outside the pale of their intercourse,
found himself clad in a kind of authority, which sometimes he dared to
exert.
Nevertheless, this change found little reflection in the natures of
those who had persecuted him. At heart they remained as they were
before. This innate ferocity was shown the more particularly in their
attitude towards the aged school-master. Each day the old man seemed to
fail more visibly in years. His eyes grew so dim that he could hardly
walk without a guide. He became so deaf that he could not hear the
loudest words that were spoken. So feeble was his frame that it could
scarcely totter from one room to another.
Of these circumstances his pupils took a full advantage. They fought
among themselves continually, and indulged in rude play in the master’s
presence. They caricatured his infirmities, and made grimaces at him.
Sometimes they would pester him with tricks; they would pelt him with
balls of paper, or spill ink over him, or secretly fasten his coat to
his chair. One boy stretched a cord across the door in the hope that
the old man might trip over it; another boy wrote “Doddering old fool”
in chalk upon his back.
Such a pitiable weakness was taken as the proclamation of a perpetual
holiday. For many weeks not a task was performed, since, although the
master was able to call on each boy as formerly to read aloud his task,
he had no longer the power to discriminate between the true and the
false. Thus scope was given for their natural love of parody. One would
read in lieu of a passage from Homer the report of a cricket match from
a newspaper; another would substitute “Dick Deadeye’s Adventures among
the Red Indians” for the Metamorphoses of Ovid; while a third would
incorporate the description of a crime in the “Police Gazette” with the
poetry of Virgil and Wordsworth.
One boy alone remained faithful to the precept of this aged man, and
it was he who still sat at the master’s table. He only maintained his
obedience; he only abstained from casting indignity upon impotent old
age. On more than one occasion the boy, timorous by nature as he was,
was almost moved to a rage of tears by some more than usually wanton
jest. Once he rose from his seat and cried in high-pitched tones,
“Shame upon you all, that you have no mercy for the infirm.”
This outburst was received with derision. A little while before, had
the boy dared to make it, he would have been requited with blows.
During this time the numbers who came to the school diminished
steadily. Many of the boys ceased to attend, and no new scholars
appeared to take their places. But the aged school-master sat still at
his post, although his eyes grew dimmer and dimmer, his hearing duller,
his limbs feebler. One morning as he called the roster and marked only
nine as answering to their names, he said, “Our numbers are not what
they were. Nine is our smallest muster in sixty-eight years.”
“Have you kept this school sixty-eight years, sir?” said one of the
nine, with an air of incredulity, and making at the same time a grimace
for the amusement of his eight companions.
“Sixty-eight years, Amphistides, have I kept this school,” said the old
man.
“You must be getting on in years, sir,” said Amphistides, with mock
gravity.
“I am ninety-four years of age, Amphistides,” said the master;
“ninety-four years of age. I have seen many and strange things.”
“Yes, sir, you must have done,” said Amphistides, leering all about
him; “and I suppose you will retire on your fortune on your hundredth
birthday?”
“If Nature has bowels, Amphistides,” said the old man, “she may spare
this frame from such a term. Yet, as I say, Amphistides, my life has
seen many strange things. It has run its course in the most wonderful
era of which history has kept the record. It has seen steam and
electricity annihilate time and space. It has seen bombshells and
anæsthetics, and devices of a most wonderful character arrive upon the
earth. It has seen new forces dragged out of the bosom of nature. It
has seen time forced to yield his dread secrets. It has witnessed the
overthrow of many creeds. It has witnessed the mind of man pass through
many phases. New dynasties has it seen arise; new planets has it seen
appear in the heavens. It has seen death robbed of its terrors, and
birth bereaved of its sanctity. It has been taught to read the past
like an open page. And now, Amphistides, it only remains to commit
these limbs to the quiet earth.”
The latter part of this queer utterance could scarcely be heard, for
the thin, piping tones of the aged school-master were drowned by the
boys exclaiming to one another, “What an old babbler he is! He is like
a baby without its nurse.”
From this time even the slender number of boys that remained began to
grow less. And at last came the day when there was only one boy left
in the school. He was the boy who had sat continually at the master’s
table. And one day, as he sat transcribing a favourite passage out of
the ancient authors, two rough and coarse-looking men entered the room
rudely and noisily. Without ceremony they began to strip the walls and
to uproot the desks, which were clamped by pieces of iron to the floor.
Having removed these, they took away the chairs and tables, and other
pieces of furniture. Then they came to demand the table at which the
boy and the aged master were seated side by side.
“Now then,” said one of the men roughly to the old man; “give us this
table and these two chairs. You have paid no rent for a year.”
The aged school-master did not answer.
“He must be deaf,” they said to one another.
The man who had first spoken repeated his words in a louder and coarser
tone.
“He must be asleep,” he said.
Yet, as they continued to speak to the old man without receiving an
answer, they began to address their questions to his stark visage and
his curious posture. They shook him by the arms and peered into his
face.
“Why,” they said, “he looks as though he will never answer again.”