"BEYNON IS A LOUSE,"
and we were all rather pleased, except Beynon. But he well deserved the insult, being a fearful outsider and generally hated; and, in any case, he couldn't hit back, for though he had been known to sneak many a time and oft, yet it wasn't likely he would sneak about a thing that showed him in his true colours, like the writing on the Doctor's study window.
Well, it was a triumph in a way, and everybody heard of it, and it was a regular adventure to go into the Doctor's study and see the insult to Beynon, which, of course, would last forever, unless somebody broke the window; and, in fact, Beynon once told me, in a fit of rage, that he meant to break the window and take the consequences. But he hadn't the pluck, even when he got an excellent chance to do so; and when, in despair, he tried to bribe other chaps to break the window, he hadn't enough money, so he failed in every way, and the insult stood.
I must tell you the writing was very small, and could only be seen by careful scrutiny. It was absolutely safe from the Doctor, or, in fact, anybody who didn't know it was there; and, naturally, Tudor never felt the slightest fear that it would ever be seen by the eyes of an enemy.
When, therefore, it was discovered, and shown to the Doctor, and all was lost, Tudor felt bitterly surprised. It came out that a housemaid, who disliked Beynon, found it when she was cleaning the window, and she showed it to Milly Dunston, and the hateful Milly, who loathed Tudor, because he had once given her a cough lozenge of a deadly kind, and made her suck it before she had found out the truth, promptly told her mother about the inscription, and her mother sneaked to the Doctor.
Discovery might still have been avoided, but, unfortunately, Tudor's glazier's diamond was well known, because he had been reported by Brown for scratching Brown's looking-glass over the mantelpiece in Brown's study, when he thought Brown was miles away, and Brown came in at the critical moment. So Dunston knew only too well that Tudor had a glazier's diamond, and, owing to the laws of cause and effect, felt quite sure that Tudor had done the fatal deed.
Therefore Tudor suffered the full penalty, and Dr. Dunston told the school that Tudor's coarseness was only exceeded by his lawless insolence and contempt for private property. That it should have been done in his own study, during intervals of respite in the history lesson, naturally had its effect on the Doctor, and made it worse for Tudor. The glazier's diamond had to be given up, and Tudor was flogged; but being very apt to crock and often bursting out coughing without any reason, the Doctor did not flog Tudor to any great extent; and it was not the flogging, but the loss of his glazier's diamond that made Tudor so mad and resolved him on his revenge.
Well, he had a very revengeful nature, as a matter of fact, and if anybody scored on him, he was never, as you may say, contented with life in general until he had scored back. And he always did so, and sometimes, though he might have to wait for a term or even two, he was like the elephant that a man stuck a pin into, who remembered it and instantly killed the man when he met him again twenty years later.
To be revenged in an ordinary way is, of course, easy; but to be revenged against the Doctor is far from easy, and I reminded Tudor how hard it had been even to revenge himself on Brown, when Brown scored heavily off him; and if it was hard to be revenged on a master like Brown, what would it be to strike a blow at the Doctor?
He said it might or might not come off; but he should be poor company for me, or anybody, until he had had a try, and he developed his scheme of a revenge, and thought of nothing else until the idea was ready to be put into execution.