Sheer Off: A Tale

by A. L. O. E.

Persis did not know how to answer the question, and had no time to do so had she known, for the sound of young voices, and the trampling of heavy boots in the adjoining room, told that the boys were beginning to assemble. Never had Franks been less inclined to begin his daily labor; never had he met his scholars with less of kindly good-humor.

For Ned was no model of perfection. He was naturally of a hot and hasty spirit; and though, from Christian principle, he usually held his temper under such command that he had the reputation of possessing a good one, it had cost him many a struggle to make it obey the rein. On this particular morning, with an aching head, weary frame, and worried mind, he felt irritable and impatient. He was angry with the dull lad who could not remember that seven times eight is not seventy-eight; and when Bill Doyle, repeating his natural-history lesson, said that horses ran wild on the staircase in Russia, instead of the steppes, Ned, who at another time might have smiled at the blunder, which was probably made half in fun, muttered something about "blockhead," and sent the boy to the bottom of the class.

Bill, the son of Sir Lacy Barton's groom, being a sharp, pert little fellow, was not disposed to take his punishment quietly, or to be called blockhead on any subject connected with horses. He whispered to the boy who sat next him, "He don't know nothing about horses hisself."

"What's that?" exclaimed Ned Franks, whose sharp ear had caught the whisper.

"Father says sailors have never no notion of riding," said the saucy little urchin, "and when they mounts a horse, are as likely to get up with their face to the tail as the head." At which observation a little titter ran round the school.

It has been remarked that few things nettle a man so much as to doubt his skill in riding; and Ned, who was always jealous for the honor of his old profession, was in no humor to take as a jest the slight thus cast on the whole of the navy.

"Then you may tell your father, when you go home," he said, angrily, "that there are no better horsemen than some of our blue-jackets; and as for riding,—when we were lying off Alexandria, every day that we could get leave ashore, I and my messmates mounted and galloped at a pace that would have made your jockeys stare."

As the word of the one-armed school-master was always implicitly believed, Ned could see that he had raised himself not a little in the eyes of his pupils, especially those of Bill Doyle, by the accomplishment of horsemanship to which he had thus laid claim. But Ned had hardly spoken the hasty sentence, when he was angry with himself for having been betrayed by foolish pride into uttering it. He felt that for once he had been guilty both of exaggeration, and of (without actually speaking untruth) misleading the boys as to his meaning.

Any one of a soul less transparently candid than that of Ned Franks might have thought it weak scrupulosity to let the mind dwell for a moment on such a seeming trifle as this. There is a marvellous difference between the consciences of men. Some have become hard as the horny hoof of an ass; little short of a bullet (by which figure I would represent some open act of wickedness) can make them feel pain at all. Other consciences are tender and sensitive as the apple of the human eye, and what to many would seem an almost invisible speck of sin greatly disturbs and troubles them. This is one of the reasons why holiness and humility are so often found together; while the hardened offender, whose conscience is seared, seems almost past feeling remorse. Franks knew that he had spoken very idle words, and though he was inclined, as most people are, to make excuses for himself, his honest soul could not rest at ease until he had openly repaired his error as well as he could.

When lessons were over, and the boys were about to disperse, Ned stopped their going out of the school-room by a gesture of his hand. He stood up with his honest face a good deal more flushed than usual, for the acknowledgment which he was forcing himself to make was humiliating and painful.