Page:Dream Life - Mitchell - 1899? Altemus.djvu/60

 50 DREAM-LIFE.

Hungarian Brothers, and muse about it for hours afterward to the great detriment of your ciphering ; or, deeply lost in the story of the Scottish Chiefs, you fall to comparing such villains as Monteith with the stout boys who tease you ; and you only wish they could come within reach of the fierce Kirkpatrick s claymore.

But you are frighted out of this stolen reading by a circumstance that stirs your young blood very strangely. The master is looking very sourly on a certain morning, and has caught sight of the little weak-eyed boy over beyond you, reading Roderick Random. He sends out for a long birch rod, and having trimmed off the leaves carefully, with a glance or two in your direction, he marches up behind the bench of the poor culprit, who turns deathly pale, grapples him by the collar, drags him out over the desks, his limbs dangling in a shocking way against the sharp angles, and having him fairly in the middle of the room, clinches his rod with a new, and, as it seems to you, a very sportive grip.

You shudder fearfully.

&quot;Please don t whip me,&quot; says the boy whimpering.

&quot;Aha!&quot; says the smirking pedagogue, bringing down the stick with a quick, sharp cut, &quot;you don t like it, eh ? &quot;