"Proh flagitium! what have we here, villain?" and clutching at his victim, he raised the cane.Whereupon, with a serene and cheerful countenance, up rose the mighty form of Amyas Leigh, a head and shoulders above his tormentor, and that slate descended on the bald coxcomb of Sir Vindex Brimblecombe, with so shrewd a blow that slate and pate cracked at the same instant, and the poor pedagogue dropped to the floor, and lay for dead.
After which Amyas arose, and walked out of the school, and so quietly home; and having taken counsel with himself, went to his mother, and said, "Please, mother, I've broken schoolmaster's head.""Broken his head, thou wicked boy!" shrieked the poor widow; "what didst do that for?""I can't tell," said Amyas, penitently; "I couldn't help it.It looked so smooth, and bald, and round, and--you know?""I know? Oh, wicked boy! thou hast given place to the devil; and now, perhaps, thou hast killed him.""Killed the devil?" asked Amyas, hopefully but doubtfully.
"No, killed the schoolmaster, sirrah! Is he dead?""I don't think he's dead; his coxcomb sounded too hard for that.
But had not I better go and tell Sir Richard?"The poor mother could hardly help laughing, in spite of her terror, at Amyas's perfect coolness (which was not in the least meant for insolence), and being at her wits' end, sent him, as usual, to his godfather.
Amyas rehearsed his story again, with pretty nearly the same exclamations, to which he gave pretty nearly the same answers; and then--"What was he going to do to you, then, sirrah?""Flog me, because I could not write my exercise, and so drew a picture of him instead.""What! art afraid of being flogged?"
"Not a bit; besides, I'm too much accustomed to it; but I was busy, and he was in such a desperate hurry; and, oh, sir, if you had but seen his bald head, you would have broken it yourself!"Now Sir Richard had, twenty years ago, in like place, and very much in like manner, broken the head of Vindex Brimblecombe's father, schoolmaster in his day, and therefore had a precedent to direct him; and he answered--"Amyas, sirrah! those who cannot obey will never be fit to rule.If thou canst not keep discipline now, thou wilt never make a company or a crew keep it when thou art grown.
Dost mind that, sirrah?"
"Yes," said Amyas.
"Then go back to school this moment, sir, and be flogged.""Very well," said Amyas, considering that he had got off very cheaply; while Sir Richard, as soon as he was out of the room, lay back in his chair, and laughed till he cried again.
So Amyas went back, and said that he was come to be flogged;whereon the old schoolmaster, whose pate had been plastered meanwhile, wept tears of joy over the returning prodigal, and then gave him such a switching as he did not forget for eight-and-forty hours.
But that evening Sir Richard sent for old Vindex, who entered, trembling, cap in hand; and having primed him with a cup of sack, said--"Well, Mr.Schoolmaster! My godson has been somewhat too much for you to-day.There are a couple of nobles to pay the doctor.""O Sir Richard, gratias tibi et Domino! but the boy hits shrewdly hard.Nevertheless I have repaid him in inverse kind, and set him an imposition, to learn me one of Phaedrus his fables, Sir Richard, if you do not think it too much.""Which, then? The one about the man who brought up a lion's cub, and was eaten by him in play at last?""Ah, Sir Richard! you have always a merry wit.But, indeed, the boy is a brave boy, and a quick boy, Sir Richard, but more forgetful than Lethe; and--sapienti loquor--it were well if he were away, for I shall never see him again without my head aching.
Moreover, he put my son Jack upon the fire last Wednesday, as you would put a football, though he is a year older, your worship, because, he said, he looked so like a roasting pig, Sir Richard.""Alas, poor Jack!"
"And what's more, your worship, he is pugnax, bellicosus, gladiator, a fire-eater and swash-buckler, beyond all Christian measure; a very sucking Entellus, Sir Richard, and will do to death some of her majesty's lieges erelong, if he be not wisely curbed.
It was but a month agone that he bemoaned himself, I hear, as Alexander did, because there were no more worlds to conquer, saying that it was a pity he was so strong; for, now he had thrashed all the Bideford lads, he had no sport left; and so, as my Jack tells me, last Tuesday week he fell upon a young man of Barnstaple, Sir Richard, a hosier's man, sir, and plebeius (which I consider unfit for one of his blood), and, moreover, a man full grown, and as big as either of us (Vindex stood five feet four in his high-heeled shoes), and smote him clean over the quay into the mud, because he said that there was a prettier maid in Barnstaple (your worship will forgive my speaking of such toys, to which my fidelity compels me) than ever Bideford could show; and then offered to do the same to any man who dare say that Mistress Rose Salterne, his worship the mayor's daughter, was not the fairest lass in all Devon.""Eh? Say that over again, my good sir," quoth Sir Richard, who had thus arrived, as we have seen, at the second count of the indictment."I say, good sir, whence dost thou hear all these pretty stories?""My son Jack, Sir Richard, my son Jack, ingenui vultus puer.""But not, it seems, ingenui pudoris.Tell thee what, Mr.