“He won’t,” cried Dicksee; “he’ll want the skins to make a jacket—a beggar!”
“You’re a set of miserable cowards,” I said indignantly, “or you wouldn’t come and jump upon us now we are down.”
“You give me any of your cheek, Burr junior, and I’ll make you smell fist for your supper.”
“Pst! Some one coming!” whispered Hodson, and the three scuffled away, for there were footsteps on the stairs, and directly after Mr Rebble appeared.
“Mercer, Burr junior,” he said harshly, “Doctor Browne requests that you will not come down till he sends for you in the morning. As for you, young gentlemen, you will take no notice of the door being fastened; I shall be up here in time to let you out. Good-night.”
He went out, and closed and locked the door, and we heard him take out the key and go down the stairs.
“Well, that’s a rum one!” cried Mercer. “I say, Burr, old Rebble made an Irish bull, or something like it. How can we go down if the door’s locked?”
“It’s because they’re afraid we shall run away,” I said bitterly. “They needn’t have thought that.”
And somehow that first part of our punishment seemed to be the most bitter of all. It kept me awake for hours, growing more and more low-spirited; and, to make me worse, as I lay there listening to the loud breathing of the boys, Mercer having gone off like the rest, as if nothing was the matter, I could hear an owl come sailing about the place, now close at hand, and now right away in the distance, evidently in Sir Hawkhurst’s old park, where, no doubt, it had a home in one of the great hollow beeches. Every now and then it uttered its mournful hoi, hoi, hoi, hoi! sounding exactly like some one calling for help, and at times so real that I was ready to awaken Mercer and ask him if he thought it was a bird; but just as I had determined to do so, he spoke half drowsily from his pillow.
“Hear the old owl,” he said. “That’s the one I told you about the other night. It isn’t the same kind as we saw in old Dawson’s oast-house. They screech. Get out, you old mouser! I want to sleep.”