"You infernal villain!" cried the younger man. "I've a good mind to brain you where you sit!"
It was more easily said than done. Scrafton seized a leg of the chair in either hand, and, leaping up, began jabbing Harry with the back, while his yellow face worked hideously, and his blue eyes flamed with blood. Not a word was said as the two men stood swaying with the chair between them; and Mrs. Bickersteth, who had heard the fall and Harry's voice, was in time for this tableau, with its ring of small scared faces raised in horror.
"Mr. Scrafton!" she cried. "Mr. Ringrose! pray what are you doing here?"
"What am I doing?" shouted Harry. "Teaching this brute you keep to torture these children—teaching him what I ought to have taught him weeks ago. Oh, I had some idea of what went on, but none that it was so bad! I have seen these boys' bruises caused by this bully. I ought to have told you long ago. I tell you now, and I dare you to keep him in your school. If you do I call in the police!"
Poor Harry was quite beside himself. He had lost his head and his temper too completely to do justice to his case. His chest was heaving, his face flaming, and even now he looked at Scrafton as though about to tear that foul beard out by the roots. Scrafton grinned like a fiend, and took three tremendous pinches of snuff.
"Mr. Scrafton has been with me twenty-two years," said Mrs. Bickersteth. "I shall hear him first. Then I will deal with you once and for all. Meanwhile I shall be excessively obliged if you will retire to your room."
"I shall do nothing of the kind," retorted Harry Ringrose.
"Then you are no longer a master in my school."
"Thank God for that!"
Mrs. Bickersteth turned her back upon him, and through all his righteous heat the youth felt suddenly ashamed. In an instant he was cool.