Nothing of sufficient consequence to record here, occurred for some weeks to the Channings, or to those connected with them. October came in; and in a few days would be decided the uncertain question of the seniorship. Gaunt would leave the college on the fifth; and on the sixth the new senior would be appointed. The head-master had given no intimation whatever to the school as to which of the three seniors would obtain the promotion, and discussion ran high upon the probabilities. Some were of opinion that it would be Huntley; some, Gerald Yorke; a very few, Tom Channing. Countenanced by Gaunt and Huntley, as he had been throughout, Tom bore on his way, amid much cabal; but for the circumstance of the senior boy espousing (though not very markedly) his cause, his place would have been unbearable. Hamish attended to his customary duties in Guild Street, and sat up at night as usual in his bedroom, as his candle testified to Judith. Arthur tried bravely for a situation, and tried in vain; he could get nothing given to him—no one seemed willing to take him on. There was nothing for it but to wait in patience. He took the organ daily, and copied, at home, the cathedral music. Constance was finding great favour with the Earl of Carrick—but you will hear more about that presently. Jenkins grew more like a shadow day by day. Roland Yorke went on in his impulsive, scapegrace fashion. Mr. and Mrs. Channing sent home news, hopeful and more hopeful, from Germany. And Charley, unlucky Charley, had managed to get into hot water with the college school.

Thus uneventfully had passed the month of September. October was now in, and the sixth rapidly approaching. What with the uncertainty prevailing, the preparation for the examination, which on that day would take place, and a little private matter, upon which some few were entering, the college school had just then a busy and exciting time of it.

Stephen Bywater sat in one of the niches of the cloisters, a pile of books by his side. Around him, in various attitudes, were gathered seven of the most troublesome of the tribe—Pierce senior, George Brittle, Tod Yorke, Fred Berkeley, Bill Simms, Mark Galloway, and Hurst, who had now left the choir, but not the school. They were hatching mischief. Twilight overhung the cloisters; the autumn evenings were growing long, and this was a gloomy one. Half an hour, at the very least, had the boys been gathered there since afternoon school, holding a council of war in covert tones.

“Paid out he shall be, by hook or by crook,” continued Stephen Bywater, who appeared to be president—if talking more than his confrères constitutes one. “The worst is, how is it to be done? One can’t wallop him.”

“Not wallop him!” repeated Pierce senior, who was a badly disposed boy, as well as a mischievous one. “Why not, pray?”

“Not to any good,” said Bywater. “I can’t, with that delicate face of his. It’s like beating a girl.”

“That’s true,” assented Hurst. “No, it won’t do to go in for beating; might break his bones, or something. I can’t think what’s the good of those delicate ones putting themselves into a school of this sort. A parson’s is the place for them; eight gentlemanly pupils, treated as a private family, with a mild usher, and a lady to teach the piano.”

The council burst into a laugh at Hurst’s mocking tones, and Pierce senior interrupted it.

“I don’t see why he shouldn’t—”

“Say she, Pierce,” corrected Mark Galloway.

“She, then. I don’t see why she shouldn’t get a beating if she deserves it; it will teach her not to try her tricks on again. Let her be delicate; she’ll feel it the more.”

“It’s all bosh about his being delicate. She’s not,” vehemently interrupted Tod Yorke, somewhat perplexed, in his hurry, with the genders. “Charley Channing’s no more delicate than we are. It’s all in the look. As good say that detestable little villain, Boulter, is delicate, because he has yellow curls. I vote for the beating.”

“I’ll vote you out of the business, if you show insubordination, Mr. Tod,” cried Bywater. “We’ll pay out Miss Charley in some way, but it shan’t be by beating him.”

“Couldn’t we lock him up in the cloisters, as we locked up Ketch, and that lot; and leave him there all night?” proposed Berkeley.

“But there’d be getting the keys?” debated Mark Galloway.

“As if we couldn’t get the keys if we wanted them!” scoffingly retorted Bywater. “We did old Ketch the other time, and we could do him again. That would not serve the young one out, locking him up in the cloisters.”

“Wouldn’t it, though!” said Tod Yorke. “He’d be dead of fright before morning, he’s so mortally afraid of ghosts.”

“Afraid of what?” cried Bywater.

“Of ghosts. He’s a regular coward about them. He dare not go to bed in the dark for fear of their coming to him. He’d rather have five and twenty pages of Virgil to do, than he’d be left alone after nightfall.”

The notion so tickled Bywater, that he laughed till he was hoarse. Bywater could not understand being afraid of “ghosts.” Had Bywater met a whole army of ghosts, the encounter would only have afforded him pleasure.

“There never was a ghost seen yet, as long as any one can remember,” cried he, when he came out of his laughter. “I’d sooner believe in Gulliver’s travels, than I’d believe in ghosts. What a donkey you are, Tod Yorke!”

“It’s Charley Channing that’s the donkey; not me,” cried Tod, fiercely. “I tell you, if we locked him up here for a night, we should find him dead in the morning, when we came to let him out. Let’s do it.”

“What, to find him dead in the morning!” exclaimed Hurst. “You are a nice one, Tod!”

“Oh, well, I don’t mean altogether dead, you know,” acknowledged Tod. “But he’d have had a mortal night of it! All his clothes gummed together from fright, I’ll lay.”

“I don’t think it would do,” deliberated Bywater. “A whole night—twelve hours, that would be—and in a fright all the time, if he is frightened. Look here! I have heard of folks losing their wits through a thing of the sort.”

“I won’t go in for anything of the kind,” said Hurst. “Charley’s not a bad lot, and he shan’t be harmed. A bit of a fright, or a bit of a whacking, not too much of either; that’ll be the thing for Miss Channing.”

“Tod Yorke, who told you he was afraid of ghosts?” demanded Bywater.

“Oh, I know it,” said Tod. “Annabel Channing was telling my sisters about it, for one thing: but I knew it before. We had a servant once who told us so, she had lived at the Channings’. Some nurse frightened him when he was a youngster, and they have never been able to get the fear out of him since.”

“What a precious soft youngster he must have been!” said Mr. Bywater.

“She used to get a ghost and dress it up and show it off to Miss Charley—”

“Get a ghost, Tod?”

“Bother! you know what I mean,” said Tod, testily. “Get a broom or something of that sort, and dress it up with a mask and wings: and he is as scared over it now as he ever was. I don’t care what you say.”

“Look here!” exclaimed Bywater, starting from his niche, as a bright idea occurred to him. “Let one of us personate a ghost, and appear to him! That would be glorious! It would give him a precious good fright for the time, and no harm done.”

If the boys had suddenly found the philosopher’s stone, it could scarcely have afforded them so much pleasure as did this idea. It was received with subdued shouts of approbation: the only murmur of dissent to be heard was from Pierce senior. Pierce grumbled that it would not be “half serving him out.”

“Yes, it will,” said Bywater. “Pierce senior shall be the ghost: he tops us all by a head.”

“Hurst is as tall as Pierce senior.”

“That he is not,” interrupted Pierce senior, who was considerably mollified at the honour being awarded to him. “Hurst is not much above the tips of my ears. Besides, Hurst is fat; and you never saw a fat ghost yet.”

“Have you seen many ghosts, Pierce?” mocked Bywater.

“A few; in pictures. Wretched old scarecrows they always are, with a cadaverous face and lantern jaws.”

“That’s the reason you’ll do so well, Pierce,” said Bywater. “You are as thin as a French herring, you know, with a yard and a half of throat.”

Pierce received the doubtful compliment flatteringly, absorbed in the fine vista of mischief opening before him. “How shall I get myself up, Bywater?” asked he, complaisantly. “With horns and a tail?”

“Horns and a tail be bothered!” returned Hurst. “It must be like a real ghost, all white and ghastly.”

“Of course it must,” acquiesced Bywater.

“I know a boy in our village that they served out like that,” interposed Bill Simms, who was a country lad, and boarded in Helstonleigh. “They got a great big turnip, and scooped it out and made it into a man’s face, and put a light inside, and stuck it on a post where he had to pass at night. He was so frightened that he died.”

“Cram!” ejaculated Tod Yorke.

“He did, though,” repeated Simms. “They knew him before for an awful little coward, and they did it to have some fun out of him. He didn’t say anything at the time; didn’t scream, or anything of that sort; but after he got home he was taken ill, and the next day he died. My father was one of the jury on the inquest. He was a little chap with no father or mother—a plough-boy.”

“The best thing, if you want to make a ghost,” said Tod Yorke, “is to get a tin plate full of salt and gin, and set it alight, and wrap yourself round with a sheet, and hold the plate so that the flame lights up your face. You never saw anything so ghastly. Scooped-out turnips are all bosh!”

“I could bring a sheet off my bed,” said Bywater. “Thrown over my arm, they’d think at home I was bringing out my surplice. And if—”

A wheez............