At times he became so mellowed, that he was indulgence itself, and at other times he beat the boys unmercifully. The patrons of the school seemed to think their duty ended with the sending of their children to the school-house, without inquiring what took place after they got there.
One day Daniel asked the teacher for permission to go out-doors, and receiving it, he passed into the clear air just at the moment that a brown squirrel was running along the branch of a fallen tree.
Instantly the athletic lad darted in pursuit, and, when the nimble little animal whisked out of sight among a dense clump of vine and bushes, the boy shoved his hand in, in the hope of catching it. Instead of doing so, he touched something cold and smooth, and bringing it forth, found it was a whiskey bottle with a goodly quantity of the fiery fluid within.
"That's what the teacher comes out here for," thought Daniel, as his eyes sparkled, "and that's why he is so cross when he comes back."
He restored the bottle to its place, and returned to the school-room, saying nothing to any one until after dismissal, when he told his discovery to some of the larger boys, who, like all school-children, were ever ripe for mischief.
When such a group fall into a discussion, it may be set down as among the certainties that something serious to some one is sure to be the result.
The next morning the boys put a good charge of tartar emetic in the whiskey bottle, and shaking it up, restored it to its former place of concealment. Then, full of eager expectation, they hurried into school, where they were more studious than ever—a suspicious sign which ought to have attracted the notice of the teacher, though it seems not to have done so.
The Irish instructor took his walk as usual, and when he came back and resumed labor, it may be imagined that the boys were on the tip-toe of expectation.
They had not long to wait. The teacher grew pale, and gave signs of some revolution going on internally. But he did not yield to the feeling. As might have been expected, however, it increased his fretfulness, and whether he suspected the truth or not, he punished the boys most cruelly, as though seeking to work off his illness by exercising himself with the rod upon the backs of the lads, whose only consolation was in observing that the medicine taken unconsciously by the irate teacher was accomplishing its mission.
Matters became worse and worse, and the whippings of the teacher were so indiscriminate and brutal, that a rebellion was excited. The crisis was reached when he assailed Daniel, who struggled desperately, encouraged by the uproar and shouts of the others, until he finally got the upper hand of the master, and gave him an unquestionable trouncing.