THE boys remained in the cupola for some time longer. Once Bruce had the satisfaction of feeling the string become suddenly tight in his hands. He held it thus for a moment, as though to assure himself of the fact and then gave it a sudden pull.
It yielded!
The whole string was in his hands.
Bruce fell down on the floor, and his whole frame shook with smothered laughter.
“What in the world’s the matter with you, Bruce?” cried Bart.
“The string! ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! The string!—ha, ha!—The string!”
“The string? Well, what about the string?”
“Why, I’ve got it. I felt it grow tight,—ha, ha, ha!—and I gave it a jerk,—ha, ha, ha!—and it came,—ha, ha, ha, ha!—and now Pat’s wondering what’s become of it,—ha, ha, ha, ha!—and he’s thinking that the ghost he was shamming must be a real one, after all!”
Either Bruce’s laughter was contagious, or else the boys saw something irresistibly funny in Pat’s supposed consternation at losing the string; but whatever was the cause, the boys burst forth also into fits of laughter, which, however, they tried to smother as well as they could.
And now the question was—what to do.
At first they were going to take the string away, but they finally decided to leave it just as it was, so as to see what Pat would do under the circumstances.
After coming to this conclusion, they decided to go to bed for the night, and defer any further consideration of the subject till the following day, when they would feel fresher and less fatigued. So they descended once more, and separated for the night.
The next morning they found the excitement greater than ever. All who were in the main building had heard the noises of the night, and some in the boarding-house had heard the toll of the bell. Jiggins was sad and exceedingly solemn. Bogud went about saying that none of them could tell what might happen; which language might be taken to signify an undeniable truism; or, on the other hand, it might be considered as a suggestion of the existence of some profound, gloomy, and inscrutable mystery. Bogud rather preferred that it should be taken in that light. Muckle, Johnny, Sammy, and Billymack, all announced that they thought there was something in it, and shook their heads with dark meaning and impressive emphasis over the whole business. Pat was as usual, only a little more so. He was active in all kinds of hints. He refused to tell his own experience of the night, but suggested something grand, gloomy, and peculiar. He looked like one who wished none to question him about the secrets of his prison house. He expressed a mournful resignation to that hard fate which made him the neighbor of the fearful denizens of the garret, and meekly, but firmly, refused the offers of several boys to give him accommodation till the trouble should cease. Also, Pat had an excellent appetite, and his ruddy face and bright eyes belied the cultivated mournfulness of his expression. Bart had gone up into the cupola before breakfast, and had found that the string was taken away. He at once concluded that Pat had been up, and had quietly removed it for the day. If he had felt any consternation at having the string jerked from his hands, he had, no doubt, got completely over it, and probably attributed it to some ordinary cause, very different from the real one.
Pat’s demeanor was such that the boys saw his evident determination to keep up the excitement. He went about as before among the small boys, heightening their fears, and giving any number of dark suggestions to their excited imaginations. Bogud, and Jiggins, and Sammy, and Johnny, and Billymack, and Muckle also sought Pat’s society, and left it more confirmed than ever in their opinions. Jiggins was more than ever convinced that it was a deeply solemn season. In fact, he kept saying so to everybody all day long.
The teachers could not be ignorant of the excitement, but they took no notice of it. They thought it was some, harmless trick of some of the more mischievous boys, which did not call for their intervention as yet, but would probably be revealed in the natural course of things. So the boys were all left to themselves.
At nine o’clock the school was once more opened, after so many delays, and the duties of the new term commenced.
Alas, the first day of a new term! What a horror it brings to the heart of a boy! Fresh from the green fields, from the blue sky, from the fragrant woods, the babbling brook, the sounding shore, the lofty precipice, the bounding wave,—from all these he enters into the gloom, and darkness, and confinement of the school-room. Can there be any wonder that the fresh, young, boyish heart should quail, and his bounding young life droop, and his uproarious spirits flag on that dreary first day? Where is his life, in which of late he so exulted? Where is that grand face of Mother Nature, so dear to every boy? Where are the odor of the fields, the balsamic air of the forest, the invigorating smell of the salt sea? These are the loved memories that afflict him at his dingy desk. The first day at school for a boy is homesickness in its broadest sense. I don’t think anybody can be so homesick as a boy may be; nor can a boy at any other time be so homesick as at such a time as this. Homesickness, moreover, is not merely a pining for one’s actual home, but it is also a yearning for pleasures that have fled,—some lost grace of life,—some sweet charm which has passed away.
Now, none of our boys were at all inclined to what they called “spooniness” but still they could not help feeling the common evil of boy humanity. The school hours passed slowly and heavily, and they tried to cheer themselves with the thought that it would not be so unpleasant in a few days, after they had become used to it.
After school was over, the “B. O. W. C.” engaged in an earnest discussion over the situation. One common resolution was in all their minds, and that was, to put an end to the ghost in the garret. But how was it to be done?
“We might quietly go and tell the fellows all about it,” said Tom.
“Yes,” said Bart, “but that would be too clumsy. What I want is something more artistic; I want a dramatic close, in which there shall be a scene full of effect. If we could only work it so as to let the thing bring itself to a conclusion in some effective way, it would be a great deal more satisfactory to all concerned.”
“I should like some way,” said Bruce, “in which Pat would be conscious that he was completely used up; and I think that among us five we might arrange a counterplot against his plot.”
“Pat certainly deserves some sort of punishment for the way he has been frightening the small boys. He has been at it all day; I dare say he’s at it now. Of course before dark he’ll sneak up and fasten his string to the tongue of the bell again, so as to get all ready for the night’s operations.”
“We can easily find some way, I should think,” said Arthur, “of paying off Pat, without being cruel in any way to him. A smart shock, administered delicately and neatly, would about suit my idea of the case.”
“Yes, but how can we get something which will be mild, yet smart,—delicate, yet effective? That’s the point which we don’t seem able to decide.”
As they talked in this way they were walk? ing up the hill towards the old French orchard? As they neared the place Bart’s eyes wandered over the adjoining pasture field, and rested on the form of that donkey which had borne so large a share in the experiences of the past few days.
“I have it!” he cried, suddenly.
“What?” asked they.
“The donkey!”
“What about it?”
“He shall help us.”
“How?”
“The donkey’s our plan. We’ll play him off against the ghost, and Pat! The donkey was once a ghost himself. He’ll be the very one to do the thing up properly; he’s had experience. After performing so successfully at the hole, at our expense, you can’t place any limit to his capacity. Yes, boys, the donkey’s the very man.”
“I don’t see what good the donkey’s going to be,” said Phil.
“What good?—the very thing we want.”
“How?” asked Bruce.
“Pat won’t come up here to get frightened,” said Arthur.
“And his room is too far up for us to make the donkey bray under it,” said Tom.
“.All very true,” said Bart; “but then what’s to prevent our marching the donkey up into the garret?”
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