"Hush—just keep still, not a sound."
Dead silence.
"Well, if you don't come at once——" The dean was furious; we could hear that in his voice.
"I've got to go," said Peter, standing up. "I've got to—I've got to——" He scrambled out; the rest of us just stuck our heads up to see what would happen.
There stood the dean with no hat, just in his wig, and furiously angry. It was no fun to be Peter now. He was everlastingly slow about clambering down. The dean scolded up towards our six heads, sticking out of the dungeon:
"Yes, just try such a thing again—just try it—your backs shall suffer for it—big boys and girls as you are—killing people with stones!"
"Yes, but we didn't kill anybody," called Karsten.
I was perfectly appalled at Karsten's daring to call out such a thing to the dean, who, however, paid not the least attention; Peter had at last come within his reach, so he had something else to do.
First a box on one ear: "I'll teach you,"—then a box on the other ear: "almost killing your own mother"—and he kept on hitting. But only think; although I felt so terribly sorry for Peter, so sorry that I believe I should have been glad to take the blows in his place—I was as much to blame as he—yet there was something so fearfully exciting in watching Peter and the dean down there, that I almost felt disappointed when the dean took Peter by his left ear and dragged him away. The boys had lately made a little path down the hill and to the back gate of the dean's garden. It was lucky for Peter that there was some sort of a beaten track, now that he was being led along it by the ear.
"You can depend upon it that Peter will get a thrashing," said Karsten, who also felt the excitement of the moment. "But if it were I"—he grew very earnest—"I'd throw myself on my back and stretch my legs up in the air and kick so that nobody could come near me. He shouldn't beat me, no indeed, he'd soon find that out."