Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: July 26, 2025
He'd rather have five and twenty pages of Virgil to do, than he'd be left alone after nightfall." The notion so tickled Bywater, that he laughed till he was hoarse. Bywater could not understand being afraid of "ghosts." Had Bywater met a whole army of ghosts, the encounter would only have afforded him pleasure.
"It's the business of the whole batch of us, if you come to that!" roared Bywater, trying to accomplish the difficult feat of standing on his head on the open mullioned window-frame, thereby running the danger of coming to grief amongst the gravestones and grass of the College burial-yard.
The head-master took his place, and his birch was raised in the air to come down with a heavy stroke, when a commotion was heard at one of the desks, and Stephen Bywater rushed forward. "Stop, sir!" he said to the master. "If you will let Pierce go, I will take the punishment." The master's arm with its weapon dropped by his side, and he turned his astonished gaze upon Bywater.
"It was made of Irish linen," returned Bywater, who generally contrived to retain his coolness, whoever might grow heated. "I tell you that I have a fresh clue, Yorke; one I have been waiting for. I thought it would turn up some time. If you say you did it, by accident or how you like, I'll let it drop. If you don't, I'll bring it before Pye after breakfast." "Bring it," retorted Gerald.
He no more dared to disobey him than he could have disobeyed the head-master. Had Hurst ordered him to jump into the river he must have done it. He took the keys tendered him by Hurst, and was raising them for the pitch, when Bywater laid his hand upon them and struck them down with a sudden movement, clutching them to him. "You little wretch, you are as deaf as a donkey!" he uttered.
He could not come upon the false keys, and, finally, he made a snatch at the tray, and turned it upside down. The keys were not there. When he had fully taken in the fact it cost him some little time to do it he turned his anger upon Bywater. "You have took 'em, you have! you have turned thief, and stole 'em! I put 'em here in the knife-box, and they are gone! What have you done with 'em?"
"If they do, it will be what they have never given yet!" exclaimed Stephen Bywater. "Kissing goes by favour." "Ah, but I heard that the dean " At this moment a boy dashed into the throng, scattering it right and left. "Where are your eyes?" he whispered. Close upon them was the dean. Arm in arm with him, in his hat and apron, walked the Bishop of Helstonleigh.
"My lord," said Bywater, turning his red, impudent, but honest face full upon the prelate, "I don't deny that we do provoke him; but you can have no idea what an awful tyrant he is to us. I can't believe any one was ever born with such a cross-grained temper. He vents it upon every one: not only upon the college boys, but upon all who come in his way.
But Bywater was not to be turned from his determination. Never a boy in the school less likely than he. He went home to his breakfast, and returned to school to have his name inscribed on the roll, and then went into college with the other nine choristers, and took his part in the service. And the bottle, I say, was burning a hole in his pocket.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking