The Channings. Henry Wood

their own against Ketch.”

      “I expect they can,” significantly replied the bishop. “He would keep you out of the cloisters, would he?”

      “He is aiming at it,” returned Bywater. “There never would have been a word said about our playing there, but for him. If the dean shuts us out, it will be Ketch’s doings. The college boys have played in the cloisters since the school was founded.”

      “He would keep you out of the cloisters; so, by way of retaliation, you lock him into them—an uncomfortable place of abode for a night, Bywater.”

      “My lord!” cried Bywater.

      “Sir!” responded his lordship.

      “Does your lordship think it was I who played that trick on Ketch?”

      “Yes, I do—speaking of you conjointly with the school.”

      Bywater’s eyes and his good-humoured countenance fell before the steady gaze of the prelate. But in the gaze there was an earnest—if Bywater could read it aright—of good feeling, of excuse for the mischief, rather than of punishment in store. The boy’s face was red enough at all times, but it turned to scarlet now. If the bishop had before suspected the share played in the affair by the college boys, it had by this time been converted into a certainty.

      “Boy,” said he, “confess it if you like, be silent if you like; but do not tell me a lie.”

      Bywater turned up his face again. His free, fearless eyes—free in the cause of daring, but fearless in that of truth—looked straight into those of the bishop. “I never do tell lies,” he answered. “There’s not a boy in the school punished oftener than I am; and I don’t say but I generally deserve it! but it is never for telling a lie. If I did tell them, I should slip out of many a scrape that I am punished for now.”

      The bishop could read truth as well as any one—better than many—and he saw that it was being told to him now. “Which of you must be punished for this trick as ringleader?” he asked.

      “I, my lord, if any one must be,” frankly avowed Bywater. “We should have let him out at ten o’clock. We never meant to keep him there all night. If I am punished, I hope your lordship will be so kind as allow it to be put down to your own account, not to Ketch’s. I should not like it to be thought that I caught it for him. I heartily beg your pardon, my lord, for having been so unfortunate as to include you in the locking-up. We are all as sorry as can be, that it should have happened. I am ready to take any punishment, for that, that you may order me.”

      “Ah!” said the bishop, “had you known that I was in the cloisters, your friend Ketch would have come off scot free!”

      “Yes, that he would, until—”

      “Until what?” asked the bishop, for Bywater had brought his words to a standstill.

      “Until a more convenient night, I was going to say, my lord.”

      “Well, that’s candid,” said the bishop. “Bywater,” he gravely added, “you have spoken the truth to me freely. Had you equivocated in the slightest degree, I should have punished you for the equivocation. As it is, I shall look upon this as a confidential communication, and not order you punishment. But we will not have any more tricks played at locking up Ketch. You understand?”

      “All right, my lord. Thank you a hundred times.”

      Bywater, touching his trencher, leaped off. The bishop turned to enter his palace gates, which were close by, and encountered Ketch talking to the head-master. The latter had been passing the lodge, when he was seen and pounced upon by Ketch, who thought it a good opportunity to make his complaint.

      “I am as morally sure it was them, sir, as I am that I be alive.” he was saying when the bishop came up. “And I don’t know who they has dealings with; but, for certain, they have sperited away them rusty keys what did the mischief, without so much as putting one o’ their noses inside my lodge. I placed ‘em safe in the knife-box last night, and they’re gone this morning. I hope, sir, you’ll punish them as they deserve. I am nothing, of course. If they had locked me up, and kept me there till I was worn to a skeleton, it might be thought light of; but his lordship, the bishop”—bowing sideways to the prelate—“was a sufferer by their wickedness.”

      “To be sure I was,” said the bishop, in a grave tone, but with a twinkle in his eye; “and therefore the complaint to Mr. Pye must be preferred by me, Ketch. We will talk of it when I have leisure,” he added to Mr. Pye, with a pleasant nod, as he went through the palace gates.

      The head-master bowed to the bishop, and walked away, leaving Ketch on the growl.

      Meanwhile, Bywater, flying through the cloisters, came upon Hurst, and two or three more of the conspirators. The time was between nine and ten o’clock. The boys had been home for breakfast after early school, and were now reassembling, but they did not go into school until a quarter before ten.

      “He is such a glorious old trump, that bishop!” burst forth Bywater. “He knows all about it, and is not going to put us up for punishment. Let’s cut round to the palace gates and cheer him.”

      “Knows that it was us!” echoed the startled boys. “How did it come out to him?” asked Hurst.

      “He guessed it, I think,” said Bywater, “and he taxed me with it. So I couldn’t help myself, and told him I’d take the punishment; and he said he’d excuse us, but there was to be no locking up of Mr. Calcraft again. I’d lay a hundred guineas the bishop went in for scrapes himself, when he was a boy!” emphatically added Bywater. “I’ll be bound he thinks we only served the fellow right. Hurrah for the bishop!”

      “Hurrah for the bishop!” shouted Hurst, with the other chorus of voices. “Long life to him! He’s made of the right sort of stuff! I say, though, Jenkins is the worst,” added Hurst, his note changing. “My father says he doesn’t know but what brain fever will come on.”

      “Moonshine!” laughed the boys.

      “Upon my word and honour, it is not. He pitched right upon his head; it might have cost him his life had he fallen upon the edge of the stone step, but they think he alighted flat. My father was round with him this morning at six o’clock.”

      “Does your father know about it?”

      “Not he. What next?” cried Hurst. “Should I stand before him, and take my trencher off, with a bow, and say, ‘If you please, sir, it was the college boys who served out old Ketch!’ That would be a nice joke! He said, at breakfast, this morning, that that fumbling old Ketch must have got hold of the wrong keys. ‘Of course, sir!’ answered I.”

      “Oh, what do you think, though!” interrupted Bywater. “Ketch can’t find the keys. He put them into a knife-box, he says, and this morning they are gone. He intended to take them round to Pye, and I left him going rampant over the loss. Didn’t I chaff him?”

      Hurst laughed. He unbuttoned the pocket of his trousers, and partially exhibited two rusty keys. “I was not going to leave them to Ketch for witnesses,” said he. “I saw him throw them into the tray last night, and I walked them out again, while he was talking to the crowd.”

      “I say, Hurst, don’t be such a ninny as to keep them about you!” exclaimed Berkeley, in a fright. “Suppose Pye should go in for a search this morning, and visit our pockets? You’d floor us at once!”

      “The truth is, I don’t know where to put them,” ingenuously acknowledged Hurst. “If I hid them at home, they’d be found; if I dropped them in the street, some hullaballoo might arise from it.”

      “Let’s carry them back to the old-iron shop, and get the fellow to buy them back at half-price!”

      “Catch him doing that! Besides, the trick is sure to get wind in the town; he might be capable of coming forward and declaring that we bought the keys at his shop.”

      “Let’s throw ‘em down old Pye’s well!”

      “They’d come up again in the bucket, as ghosts do!”

      “Couldn’t