Page:Des Grieux, The Prelude to Teleny.djvu/157

 "If you scream, you dirty blackguard, I'll just murder you."

I tried to scream, but the nurse gagged me. I now recognized the man that had thus threatened me. It was Guillaume, the broad-shouldered Auvergnat servant man. Another second and he vanished behind the screen.

A few moments afterwards there were lights and footsteps in the passage, but the door being locked no one could come in. The nurse told them, however, that there was nothing the matter with me, I had been dreaming and pulled the bell-rope in my sleep; so they all went off grumbling and evidently cursing me as giving more trouble than the whole school together.

I was shaken and thumped in bed, and ordered to go off to sleep at once, which I tried to do as quickly as I possibly could.

My stay in that boarding-school was, however, not to be of long duration.

Not long after the incident of that night, Mr Durieux was explaining to us something about the Persian wars. The subject was an