Chapter 20

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_ CHAPTER TWENTY.

Nearly a week had gone by before I saw Lomax, and of course there had been no more riding lessons. Mr Rebble had given us our impositions, and we had taken our punishment patiently enough, for, as the smarting and pain went off, we could not help feeling proud and satisfied. The boys had all turned wonderfully friendly, and I was evidently a great authority. In fact, I had completely succeeded to Burr major's throne in the boys' estimation, while he went about the place almost alone, Hodson being the only fellow who tried to associate with him.

As for the Doctor, he never alluded to the encounter again.

The week, then, had passed, and Mercer and I had nearly grown respectable again, when one night, as we were going to bed, my companion turned to me.

"I say," he whispered, "let's get up early to-morrow morning, and go and see old Lom."

I shook my head.

"I've had lessons enough in boxing," I said; "I don't want to fight any more."

"I didn't mean a lesson," said Mercer. "I want to go and tell him all about how we got on."

I agreed that I should like to do that; and I awoke at sunrise, roused Mercer, and, leaving the other boys sleeping, we started for the lodge.

"Oh, I say, what a lovely morning!" cried Mercer. "Look at the dew on the leaves; it's all colours like a rainbow. When are we going fishing again? and I want some birds to stuff; and to go rabbiting, and collecting, and all sorts, and we seem to have done nothing lately."

"Hallo, Magglin!" I cried, as we turned a corner, and came suddenly upon that individual, looking as if he had just come from the big yard.

"Why, what are you doing here?" said Mercer.

"No sir; on'y wish I was. Just came up to see if the gardener's about, and he'd give me a job."

"You know he wouldn't," I said. "The Doctor will not have you about the place again."

"And it's very hard," he whined. "Everybody's agen me, and takes 'vantage of me, even young gents as owes me money and won't pay."

"Why, who owes you money, Magg?"

"You do, sir; four shillin', which I wouldn't ask you for, but--"

"I don't, Magg; I paid you everything I owed you," cried Mercer.

"Oh no, sir; don't you go for to say that which you know aren't true. It's four shillin', and I wouldn't have asked you, only I'm that hungry as never was."

"But I don't owe you anything; do I, Frank?"

"No; he paid you," I said.

"Oh, sir! Master Burr junior knows as it's wicked to tell a lie. I likes mates to stick up for one another, but it ain't right to get a trampling down of the pore. Do pay me, Master Tom Mercer. It's four shillin'."

"I don't owe you a penny, Magg; and you're a cheat."

"Nay, sir, that I aren't. Well, pay me two on it, and I'll go on trusting you the rest."

"But I'm sure I paid you everything I owed you, Magg."

"Oh no, sir. That's the way with you young gents. You forgets, that's what you does. I've lost lots o' money through the Doctor's boys; and it's very hard on a pore fellow who's trying his best to get a honest living, but as every one's agen."

"Ah, that's all gammon, Magg!" cried Mercer. "See how you left us in the lurch over our ferreting."

"I was obliged to, sir; every one's agen me so. Nobody believes in me. Do pay me the two shillin', sir."

"I won't. It's all humbug, and you don't deserve it," cried Mercer.

"There, hark at him, Master Burr junior! Aren't he hard on a pore fellow, who was always doing him kindnesses? Look at the times I've sat up o' nights to ketch him rats and mice or mouldy-warps. Didn't I climb and get you two squirls, and dig out the snake from the big bank for you?"

"Yes; and cut his tail off with the spade," cried Mercer. "You spoiled him."

"Well, I couldn't help that, sir; and I must go now, 'fore the gardener comes along."

"Why, you said you wanted to see him."

"So I did, sir; but I don't think I will. Everybody's so agen me now. Pay me the two shillin' you owe me."

"I won't. I don't owe you a penny."

"Then pay a shilling of it now, sir. I wouldn't ask you, sir, but I am so hungry, sir."

"Let's give him a shilling, Tom," I said; "I'll be half."

"Oh, very well," cried Mercer; and as I was banker that time, I placed a shilling in the man's very dirty hand.

"Thank-ye, sir," he said. "Then that makes three left, but I won't ask you for them to-day."

"That's the worst of getting in debt," said Mercer, "and not keeping account of it. I know I've bought things of him, and he has made me pay for 'em over and over again. I wonder what he was doing about here so soon."

We watched Magglin go off in a furtive way, with his head down and his back bent, so that people should not see him above the hedge, and then turned along down the path, with the gilt hands and figures of the clock looking quite orange in the morning sun. In a few minutes after, we could smell tobacco smoke, and found Lomax bending his stiff back over one of the beds in his garden, which he was busily digging.

"Ah! Mornin', young gentlemen," he shouted. "Come for a quiet lesson?"

"Not this morning, Lomax," cried Mercer.

"Going for a walk, then?"

"Only as far as here," I replied, looking at him merrily.

"Eh? What? Why, hallo!" he cried. "I didn't know. They said you were under punishment for something, but I didn't know what. Why, yes: both of you. Look at your eyes. You've been fighting!"

I nodded, and Mercer laughed.

"We've come to tell you all about it."

Lomax drove his spade down into the ground and left it standing in the bed.

"Here, come along," he cried excitedly, and he led the way into the lodge, placed chairs for us, and re-lit his pipe, before standing smoking with his back to the fire. "Now then," he cried, "let's have it."

We described our encounter, and the old soldier laughed and chuckled with satisfaction.

"Yes, that's it," he cried, as we came to an end, first one and then the other carrying on the thread of the narration to the conclusion. "That's science; that is just the same as with a well-drilled regiment, which can beat a mob of fifty times its size. Well, I'm glad you won, and were such good pupils. Shows you remembered all I taught you. Now take my advice, both of you. Don't you fight again till you are regularly obliged."

"Not going to," I said.

"That's right, boy. You'll be like a man now who has got a blunderbuss in his house. Thieves all about know that he has got one, and so they leave him alone. Well when are you going to have another riding lesson?"

"Let's begin again at once," I said; and he promised to send or go down to the General's, to ask the groom to bring up the horse in the morning.

"I'll go myself if I can," said Lomax, "and ride him up pretty quickly. He'll have had such a rest that he'll be quite skittish."

All this being settled, and it being yet early, we had time for a walk, and the discovery of sundry objects, which Mercer looked upon as treasures, and carefully placed in boxes and pieces of paper.

The first was an unhappy-looking stag beetle which seemed to have been in the wars, for one of its horns was gone, while not a dozen yards farther on we came upon a dissipated cockchafer, with a dent in his horny case, and upon both of these Mercer pounced with delight, transferring them to a flat tin paste-blacking box, inside which we could hear them scratching to get out.

The next thing to attract his attention was a fat worm, which, after a crawl in the cool, dewy night, had lost his way back to his hole, and was now crawling slowly by the roadside, with more sand sticking to him than could have been comfortable.

"Oh, what a big one!" cried Mercer. "I say, I must have him."

"For a bait for an eel or carp?" I said.

"No. To preserve."

"Let the poor thing be," I cried, and, thrusting a piece of stick under the worm, I sent it flying amongst the wet grass.

"Ugh! you cruel wretch!" cried Mercer.

"Come, that's nice," I said. "Better than letting you put it in a box, and carrying it in your hot pocket to kill."

"I shouldn't kill it, I should keep it in a pot of earth."

"Which would dry up, and the poor thing would crawl out and be trodden upon. Come along."

But he would not come along, for Tom Mercer was a true naturalist at heart, and found interest in hundreds of things I should have passed over. For instance, that morning, as we strolled a little way along the lane, we stopped to peer over the gate into a newly ploughed field at some round-looking birds which rose directly with a loud whirr, and then went skimming along, to glide over the hedge at the bottom and disappear.

"Partridges," cried Mercer. "Daresay they've got a nest somewhere not far from here. Oh, I do wish we had bought Magglin's gun. It is such a handy one. You see we could keep it up in the loft, and take it to pieces and bring it out without any one knowing, and shoot our own birds to stuff."

"Mustn't shoot partridges. They're game," I said.

"Oh, I don't know," he replied. "We shouldn't want them to eat, only to stuff, and--Hallo, look there! I haven't found one of those for ever so long."

He climbed over the gate, and picked up something cream-coloured from the hollow between two furrows.

"What is it?" I said, as he came back.

"Worm-eater," and he opened his hand.

"Why, it's a slug," I said. "Throw the nasty slimy thing away."

"'Tisn't slimy," he said, as I looked on with disgust at him poking the long-shaped creamy creature with one finger, as it lay in the palm of his left hand. "You feel it. Quite cool and dry."

"I'm not going to touch the nasty thing," I cried. "And what do you mean by a worm-eater?"

"Mean he's one. See how long and thin he is. That's so that he can creep down the worm-holes and catch the worms and eat 'em."

"Nonsense! Slugs live on lettuces and cabbages, and other green things."

"These don't," said Mercer quietly; "they live on worms."

"How do you know?"

"Because my father told me, and I've kept 'em in boxes and fed 'em with worms."

"Well, throw it away, and come along; we ought to be getting back now."

"Yes, so as to have time to go up to the museum first," he replied, but he did not throw away his last find. That was tucked into a pill-box, with the promise that I should see it eat a live worm that night.

We turned back and took the side lane which would lead us round by the keeper's cottage.

"Let's see what Bob has got stuck up on the barn side," said Mercer. "I daresay there'll be something fresh. He always says he'll save me all the good things he shoots, but he forgets and nails them on. Come on through the wood."

"But we shall get our feet so wet," I said, as Mercer jumped the ditch.

"That we won't. It will be drier here."

I followed him, and, knowing his way well, Mercer took me by a short cut among the trees, which brought us just to the back of the keeper's cottage, where dozens of the supposed enemies of the game were gibbeted. Jays, hawks, owls, little falcons, shrikes, weasels, stoats, and polecats.

"There," said Mercer, pointing, "look at that beautiful fresh jay. He might have let me--"

Mercer stopped short, for we heard Polly Hopley's voice speaking loudly, evidently at the front of the cottage.

"I don't want it, and I won't have it. Give it to some one else."

"No, I shan't," said a harsh voice, which we knew at once as Magglin's. "I bought it o' porpos for you, and you've got to wear it."

"Then I shan't, and if you come talking to me again like that, I shall tell father."

"No, you won't."

"Indeed and I shall, and the sooner you go the better. He isn't far off."

"Yes, he is," said Magglin, "and won't be back for hours."

"How do you know?"

"Because I watched him."

"Yes, that's what you poaching chaps always do, watch the keeper till he's out of the way," said Polly sharply.

"Don't call me a poacher, Polly."

"Yes, I shall; and that's what you are."

"Come away," I whispered; "don't let's stop listening."

"We can't help it, without going all the way back."

"Poachers always make the best keepers, Polly, and I'm going to be a keeper now, and marry you."

"Are you, indeed?" said the girl indignantly. "That you just aren't, and if you ever dare to call me Polly again, I'll throw a bucket o' water over you."

"Not you," said Magglin. "I say, do have it. It's real gold."

"I don't care if it's real silver!" cried Polly. "I've got brooches of my own, thank you, and I'll trouble you to go."

"'Tarn't good enough for you, I suppose. Well, I'll bring you something better."

_Bang_.

The cottage door was closed violently. Then we heard footsteps, which ceased after a minute, and we went on out toward the lane.

"Make haste!" I said; "it must be getting late."

"Ah," said Mercer, "if I'd got a watch like old Eely's, we could tell the time."

"And as you haven't, we must guess it," I said. "Look!"

Mercer turned at my words, for he was looking back to see if Polly Hopley was visible at the cottage door, the news we had heard of her father being away robbing us of any desire to call.

There, about fifty yards away, with his back to us, was Magglin, rubbing something on his sleeve. Then he breathed upon it, and gave it another rub, before holding it up in the sunshine, and we could see that it was bright and yellow, possibly a brooch.

The next minute the poacher had leaped into the wood and passed among the trees.

"Oh, what a game!" said Mercer, as we walked away. "If Bob Hopley knows, he'll lick old Magglin with a ramrod. There, come on."

We reached the school in good time, only two or three of the boys being about, and spent the next half-hour turning over Mercer's melancholy-looking specimens of the taxidermist's art, one of the most wretched being a half finished rabbit, all skin and tow.

"Well, I would burn that," I said. "It does look a brute."

"Burn it? I should think not," he cried indignantly. "It looks queer, because it isn't finished. I'm going to make a natural history scene of that in a glass case. That's to be a rabbit just caught by a weasel, and I shall have the weasel holding on by the back of its neck, and the rabbit squealing."

"Where's your weasel?"

"Oh, I shall get Magglin or Bob Hopley to shoot me one some day. Wish I'd got a gun of my own!"

"You're always wishing for guns and watches, or something else you haven't got," I said, laughing.

"Well, that's quite natural, isn't it?" cried Mercer good-humouredly. "I always feel like that, and it does seem a shame that old Eely should have tail coats and white waistcoats and watches, and I shouldn't. But, I say, Frank, he can't fight, can he?"

"No," I said, "but don't talk about it. I hate thinking of it now."

"I don't," said Mercer. "I shall always think about it when I come up here, and feel as I did then, punching poor old Dicksee's big fat head. I say, won't it do him good and make him civil? Look here," he continued, making a bound and pointing to a knot on the rough floor boards, "that's the exact spot where his head came down whop." _

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