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Updated: May 7, 2025
Like our only other foreigner, the Count, Moossy was a nameless man, for although it must have been printed on the board in the vestibule of the school, which had a list of masters and of classes, no one can now hint at Moossy's baptismal name, nor even suggest his surname.
When they came to the main road, Speug would not give up his work, but brought the carriage manfully to the little cottage, hidden in a garden, where Moossy lodged.
"That'll learn him to be meddling with canes. It's plenty that Bulldog has a cane, without yon meeserable wretch"; and that was the last effort which Moossy made to exercise discipline. Every afternoon he made a pitiable appeal that the boys would behave and learn their verbs.
There was no end to the devices of the Seminary for enjoying themselves and tormenting Moossy; and had it not been for Nestie, who had some reserves of taste, the fun would have been much more curious. As it was, Moossy never knew when he might not light upon a frog, till it seemed as if the class-room for modern languages were the chosen home for the reptiles of the district.
Upon Bulldog's suggestion, Moossy once provided himself with a cane, but it failed in his hands the first time he tried to use it, which was not at all wonderful, as Jock Howieson, who did not approve of canes, and regarded them as an invention of the Evil One, had doctored Moossy's cane with a horse-hair, so that it split into two at a stroke, and one piece flying back struck Moossy on the face.
Times there were, I am sorry to say, when at the sting of the bullet Moossy said bad words, and although they were in German, the boys knew that it was swearing, and Speug's voice would be loudest in horror. "Mercy on us, lads! this is awful language to hear in the Seminary! If the Town Council gets word of this, there'll be a fine stramish.
I say, he ain't a bad sort Moossy after all. Bet you a bottle of g-ginger-beer that's Moossy's wife, and that's why he's so poor." They were leaving the lane when they heard an exclamation, and going back they found that the miserable machine had slipped into the ditch and there stuck fast beyond poor Moossy's power of recovery.
He looked so mean, so ill put together, so shabby, so dirty, that the very "Pennies" hooted at him and flung him in our faces. The Rector was also careless of his dress, and mooned along the road, but then everybody knew that he was a mighty scholar, and that if you woke him from his meditation he would answer you in Greek; but even Speug understood that Moossy was not a scholar.
Moossy was afraid to complain to the Rector, lest his own incompetence should be exposed and his bread be taken from him; and of this the boys, with the unerring cunning of savages, were perfectly aware, and the torture might have gone on for years had it not been for the intervention of Bulldog and a certain incident.
It was a fortunate thing for Moossy that some one died in Germany and left him a little money, so that he could give up the hopeless drudgery of the Seminary and go home to live in a little house upon the banks of the Rhine. His wife, who had been improving under Dr. Manley's care, began to brisk up at once, and was quite certain of recovery when one afternoon they left Muirtown Station.
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