The explosion was distinctly heard by the merry-makers, and the picnic broke up in confusion. Crowds of excited people were soon skirting the winding banks of the river, and Stephen was found and fished out of the water, more dead than alive. He was immediately taken to his home, and a surgeon was called in. The surgeon set the broken arm, and after examining the boy carefully, said that although severely bruised, he was not hurt internally. But Stephen’s sufferings were not over yet. The fright and the shock proved too much for him; fever set in; and it was long before he rejoined his school-fellows, and several months before he recovered his health and strength.
Mr. Lawrence, “a sadder and a wiser man,” blamed himself for having indirectly contributed to the disaster. He reproved his son in these words: “I must say, Will, that you and your companions showed a deplorable want of honor in your dealings with poor Stephen this day.”
The man in whose field the explosion had taken effect set up a howl of righteous indignation on seeing the “chasm” in the ground; and did not stop to consider that the youngsters had only altered the physical features of a little plot of stony and untilled ground by changing the position of a few ancient stones, and by removing a few others into the bed of the river.
The portly and benevolent old gentleman said sadly, as he gazed upon the wreck of his sometime gay little boat, “Well, it is now manifested that a boat cannot be taken over these falls without being shattered to flinders. But, of course, nothing can kill a modern boy; he is indestructible.”
The observing reader of this history will remark that whatever these boys meddled with generally came to a dishonorable end.
And the “reformers” themselves, what of them? Probably, in the whole United States there could not have been found three more miserable boys than Will, Charles, and George, as they trudged home that day from the scene of their exploits—the clothing of the first two uncomfortably wet—the frame of the other smarting with pain. But their forlorn and dilapidated appearance excited no pity from the horrified villagers.
Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence, in despair, sent their son to his aunt Eleanor’s, to spend a few days, hoping that he would there reflect on the folly of his doings, and amend. He and the others suffered tenfold more shame than Stephen after the scandal about the “mad dog.”
Boys, listen to the moral of this unconscionably dreary chapter:
It is quite right and desirable that you should, under proper tuition, learn the uses and the usefulness of gunpowder; but, if you know of any trick in which it is to be an agent, think of Stephen, and hang back.