The Channings. Henry Wood

nodding to the two on the wall, “and there be the wrong ones,” nodding towards an old knife-tray, into which he had angrily thrown the rusty keys, upon entering his lodge last night, accompanied by the crowd. “They meant to lock me up all night in the cloisters, the wicked cannibals! I hope the dean’ll expel ‘em! I’ll make my complaint to the head-master, I will! Drat all college schools! there’s never no good done in ‘em!”

      “How are you this morning, Ketch?”

      The salutation proceeded from Stephen Bywater, who, in the boisterous manner peculiar to himself and his tribe, had flung open the door without the ceremony of knocking.

      “I’m none the better for seeing you,” growled Ketch.

      “You need not be uncivil,” returned Bywater, with great suavity. “I am only making a morning call upon you, after the fashion of gentlefolks; the public delights to pay respect to its officials, you know. How do you feel after that mishap last night? We can’t think, any of us, how you came to make the mistake.”

      “I’ll ‘mistake’ you!” shrieked Ketch. “I kep’ a nasty old, rusty brace o’ keys in my lodge to take out, instead o’ the right ones, didn’t I?”

      “How uncommonly stupid it was of you to do so!” said Bywater, pretending to take the remark literally. “I would not keep a duplicate pair of keys by me—I should make sure they’d bring me to grief. What do you say? You did not keep duplicate keys—they were false ones! Why, that’s just what we all told you last night. The bishop told you so. He said he knew you had made a mistake, and taken out the wrong keys for the right. My belief is, that you went out without any keys at all. You left them hanging upon the nail, and you found them there. You had not got a second pair!”

      “You just wait!” raved old Ketch. “I’m a-coming round to the head-master, and I’ll bring the keys with me. He’ll let you boys know whether there’s two pairs, or one. Horrid old rusty things they be; as rusty as you!”

      “Who says they are rusty?”

      “Who says it! They are rusty!” shrieked the old man. “You’d like to get me into a madhouse, you boys would, worrying me! I’ll show you whether they’re rusty! I’ll show you whether there’s a second brace o’ keys or not. I’ll show ‘em to the head-master! I’ll show ‘em to the dean! I’ll show ‘em again to his lordship the bi—What’s gone of the keys?”

      The last sentence was uttered in a different tone and in apparent perplexity. With shaking hands, excited by passion, Mr. Ketch was rummaging the knife-box—an old, deep, mahogany tray, dark with age, divided by a partition—rummaging for the rusty keys. He could not find them. He searched on this side, he searched on that; he pulled out the contents, one by one: a black-handled knife, a white-handled fork, a green-handled knife with a broken point, and a brown-handled fork with one prong, which comprised his household cutlery; a small whetstone, a comb and a blacking-brush, a gimlet and a small hammer, some leather shoe-strings, three or four tallow candles, a match-box and an extinguisher, the key of his door, the bolt of his casement window, and a few other miscellanies. 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?”

      “Come, that’s good!” exclaimed Bywater, in too genuine a tone to admit a suspicion of its truth. “I have not been near your knife-box; I have not put my foot inside the door.”

      In point of fact, Bywater had not. He had stood outside, bending his head and body inwards, his hands grasping either door-post.

      “What’s gone with ‘em? who ‘as took ‘em off? I’ll swear I put ‘em there, and I have never looked at ‘em nor touched ‘em since! There’s an infamous conspiracy forming against me! I’m going to be blowed up, like Guy Fawkes!”

      “If you did put them there—‘if,’ you know—some of your friends must have taken them,” cried Bywater, in a tone midway between reason and irony.

      “There haven’t a soul been nigh the place,” shrieked Ketch.

      “Except the milk, and he gave me my ha’porth through the winder.”

      “Hurrah!” said Bywater, throwing up his trencher. “It’s a clear case of dreams. You dreamt you had a second pair of keys, Ketch, and couldn’t get rid of the impression on awaking. Mr. Ketch, D.H., Dreamer-in-chief to Helstonleigh!”

      Bywater commenced an aggravating dance. Ketch was aggravated sufficiently without it. “What d’ye call me?” he asked, in a state of concentrated temper that turned his face livid. “‘D?’ What d’ye mean by ‘D?’ D stands for that bad sperit as is too near to you college boys; he’s among you always, like a ranging lion. It’s like your impedence to call me by his name.”

      “My dear Mr. Ketch! call you by his name! I never thought of such a thing,” politely retorted Bywater. “You are not promoted to that honour yet. D.H., stands for Deputy-Hangman. Isn’t it affixed to the cathedral roll, kept amid the archives in the chapter-house”—John Ketch, D.H., porter to the cloisters! “I hope you don’t omit the distinguishing initials when you sign your letters?”

      Ketch foamed. Bywater danced. The former could not find words. The latter found plenty.

      “I say, though, Mr. Calcraft, don’t you make a similar mistake when you are going on public duty. If you were to go there, dreaming you had the right apparatus, and find, in the last moment, that you had brought the wrong, you don’t know what the consequences might be. The real victim might escape, rescued by the enraged crowd, and they might put the nightcap upon you, and operate upon you instead! So, be careful. We couldn’t afford to lose you. Only think, what a lot of money it would cost to put the college into mourning!”

      Ketch gave a great gasp of agony, threw an iron ladle at his tormentor, which, falling short of its aim, came clanking down on the red-brick floor, and banged the door in Bywater’s face. Bywater withdrew to a short distance, under cover of the cathedral wall, and bent his body backwards and forwards with the violence of his laughter, unconscious that the Bishop of Helstonleigh was standing near him, surveying him with an exceedingly amused expression. His lordship had been an ear-witness to part of the colloquy, very much to his edification.

      “What is your mirth, Bywater?”

      Bywater drew himself straight, and turned round as if he had been shot. “I was only laughing, my lord,” he said, touching his trencher.

      “I see you were; you will lose your breath altogether some day, if you laugh in that violent manner. What were you and Ketch quarrelling about?”

      “We were not quarrelling, my lord. I was only chaff—teasing him,” rejoined Bywater, substituting one word for the other, as if fearing the first might not altogether be suited to the bishop’s ears; “and Ketch fell into a passion.”

      “As he often does, I fear,” remarked his lordship. “I fancy you boys provoke him unjustifiably.”

      “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. If your lordship were not the bishop,” added bold Bywater, “he would vent it upon you.”

      “Would he?” said the bishop, who was a dear lover of candour, and would have excused a whole bushel of mischief, rather than one little grain of falsehood.

      “Not a day passes, but he sets upon us with his tongue. He would keep us out of the cloisters; he would keep us out of our own schoolroom. He goes to the head-master with the most unfounded cram—stories, and when the master