"Tom Drift! Yah! Souse Tom Drift! Roll Tom Drift in the mud! Yah!

Tom Drift!"

And sure enough Tom Drift would have suffered the penalty prepared for him, despite Charlie's attempt at rescue, had not help come at that moment from a most unexpected quarter.

It will be remembered that Joe Halliday and his friend Walcot had planned a long walk on this holiday to Whitstone Woods, some ten miles beyond Gurley.

This plan they had duly carried out, and were now making the best of their way back to Randlebury along the crowded highway, when the sudden cry of a schoolfellow's name startled them.

"Tom Drift! Yah! Beggarly schoolboy!"

"I say, Joe, that's one of our fellows! What's happening?"

Joe accosted a pa.s.ser-by.

"What's going on?" he inquired.

"They're only going to souse a young chap in the river."

"What for?"

"I don't know; 'cause he don't think the same as old Shuffle, the three- card chap."

"We must do something, Joe," said Walcot.

"I wish it were any other chap; but come on, we're in for it now," said Joe.

And with that these two broad-shouldered, tall fellows dashed into the thick of the fray.

Tom's bearers were now at the bridge, which was a low one, and were turning down towards the water's edge, when a new cry arrested them.

"Now, Randlebury! Put it on, Randlebury! Who backs up Randlebury?"

It was the old familiar cry of the football field, and at the sound of the well-known voices, Charlie's heart leapt for joy.

"I do!" he shouted, with all his might. "Here you are, Randlebury!"

And Jim's gruff voice took up the cry too.

A panic set in among the blackguards. To them it seemed that the school was come in force to rescue their comrade, for on either side the cry rose, and fighting towards them they could, see at any rate two stalwart figures, who, they concluded, were but the leaders of following force.

One of the men was hardy enough to turn at bay at the moment Walcot had cleared his way at last up to the front. Big bully though he was, he was no match for the well-conditioned, active athlete who faced him, and Walcot punished him in a manner that made him glad enough to take to his heels as fast as he could.

This exploit turned the day. Dropping Tom--how and where they did not stay to consider--they followed their retreating companion with all the speed they were capable of, and left the enemy without another blow masters of the situation.

But if, as a victory, this charge of the Randlebury boys had been successful, as a rescue it had failed; for Tom Drift, being literally dropped from the shoulders of his executioners, had fallen first on to the parapet of the bridge, and then with a heavy shock into the stony stream beneath. When Walcot, Joe, Charlie, and Jim among them, went to pull him out, he was senseless. At first they thought him merely stunned by the fall (the stream was only a few inches deep), but presently when they began to lift him, they found that his right arm, on which he had fallen, was broken.

Bandaging the limb as well as they could, and bathing his forehead with water, they succeeded in restoring Tom to consciousness, and then, between them, carried him as gently as possible to the nearest house, when they managed, with some difficulty, to get a vehicle to convey them the rest of their journey. It was a sad, silent journey. To Tom, the pain caused by every jolt was excruciating. They did their best to ease him, holding him lying across their knees, while Jim drove along the level footpath; but by the time the school was reached the sufferer was again insensible, and so he remained till the surgeon had set his arm.

Thus ended the eventful holiday.

Before Charlie went to bed, the doctor sent for him to his study, and there required to know the true history of that day's doings. And Charlie told him all. I need hardly say that, according to his version, the case against the four culprits was far lighter than had their impeachment been in other hands. He took to himself whatever blame he could, and dwelt as little as possible on the plot that had been laid to get him to Gurley, and on the means which had been used to keep him when once there. He finished up with a very warm and pathetic appeal for Tom Drift.

"Don't, please, expel Tom Drift," he said, in all the boldness of generosity; "he was led on by the others, sir, and he's punished badly enough as it is. Oh! sir, if you'd seen his mother cry, when she only spoke of him, you couldn't do it."

"You must leave that to me," said the doctor sternly, "I hope I shall do nothing that is unjust or unkind. And now go to bed, and thank G.o.d for the care He has taken of you to-day."

And Charlie went.

Tom Drift was not expelled. For weeks he lay ill, and during that time no nurse was more devoted, and no companion more constant, than Charlie Newcome. A friendship sprang up between the two, strangely in contrast with the old footing on which they had stood. No longer was Tom the vain, hectoring patron, but the docile penitent, over whose spirit Charlie's character began from that time to exercise an influence which, if in the time to come it could always have worked as it did now, would have gone far to save Tom Drift from many a bitter fall and experience.

When Tom, a week before the Christmas holidays, left the sick-room and took his place once more in his cla.s.s, Gus, Margetson, and Shadbolt were no longer inmates of Randlebury School.

CHAPTER TEN.

HOW I CHANGED HANDS AND QUITTED RANDLEBURY.

And now, dear reader, we must take a leap together of three years. For remember, I am not setting myself to record the life of any one person, or the events which happened at any one place. I am writing my own life--or those parts of it which are most memorable--and therefore it behoves me not to dwell unduly on times and scenes in which I was not personally interested.

I had a very close connection with the events that rendered Charlie's first term at school so exciting, but after that, for three years, I pursued the even tenor of my way, performing some twenty-six thousand two hundred and eighty revolutions, unmarked by any incident, either in my own life or that of my master worthy of notice.

By the end of those three years, however, things were greatly changed at Randlebury. Charlie, not far from his sixteenth birthday, was now a tall, broad-shouldered fellow, lording it in the Upper Fifth, and the hero of the cricket field of which he himself had once been a cadet. In face he was not greatly altered. Still the old curly head and bright eyes. He _was_ noticed occasionally to stroke his chin abstractedly; and some envious detractors went so far as to rumour that, in the lowest recesses of his trunk he had a razor, wherewith on divers occasions, in dread secret, he operated with slashing effect. Be this as it might, Charlie was growing up. He had a f.a.g of his own, who alternately quaked and rejoiced beneath his eye; he wore a fearful and wonderful stick-up collar on Sundays, and, above all, he treated me with a careless indifference which contrasted wonderfully with his former enthusiasm, and betokened only too significantly the advance of years on his young head.

True, he wound me up regularly; but he often left me half the day under his pillow; and though once in a fit of artistic zeal he set himself to hew out a C.N. in startling characters on my back, with the point of a bodkin, he never polished me now as he was once wont to do.

All this was painful to me, especially the operation with the bodkin, but I still rejoiced to call him master, and to know that though years had changed his looks, and sobered his childish exuberance, the same true heart still beat close to mine, and remained still as warm and guileless as when little Charlie Newcome, with me in his pocket, first put his foot forth into the world.

There were two besides myself who could bear witness at the end of these three years that time had not changed the boy's heart. These two, I need hardly say, were Tom Drift and Jim Halliday.

To Tom, Charlie had become increasingly a friend of the true kind. Ever since the day at Gurley races, the influence of the younger boy had grown and overshadowed the elder, confirming his unstable resolutions, animating his sluggish mind with worthy ambitions, and giving to his pliant character a tone coloured by his own honesty and uprightness.

Just as a pilot will safely steer the ship amid shoals and rocks out into the deeper waters, so Charlie, by his quiet influence, had given Tom's life a new direction towards honour and usefulness.

Once, and once only, during those three years had he shown a disposition to hark back on his old discreditable ways, and that was the result of a casual meeting with Gus one summer during the holidays, with whom, he afterwards confessed to Charlie, he was induced to forget for a time his better resolutions in the snares of a billiard-room. But the backsliding was repented of almost as soon as committed, and, to Charlie's anxious eyes, appeared to leave behind no bad result.

Jim was the same downright outspoken boy as ever. He had yielded, surlily at first, to the admission of Tom Drift into the confidence and friendship of himself and his chum, but by degrees, moved by Charlie's example, he had become more hearty, and now these three boys were the firmest friends in Randlebury.

One day, as Charlie was sitting in his study attempting, with many groans, to make sense out of a very obscure pa.s.sage in Cicero, his f.a.g entered and said,--

"Newcome, there's a parcel for you down at Trotter's."

"Why didn't you bring it up, you young m.u.f.f?" inquired his lord.

"Because it's got to be signed for, and he wouldn't let me do that for you."

"Like your cheek to think of such a thing. What's it like?"

"Oh, it's in a little box. I say, Newcome, shall we go and get it?"