Another hour passed, and still Bert had made no start, and still the doctor sat at his desk absorbed in his book and apparently quite oblivious of the boy before him. Six o'clock drew near, and with it the early dusk of an autumn evening. Bert was growing faint with hunger, and, oh! so weary of his confinement. Not until it was too dark to read any longer did Dr. Johnston move; and then, without noticing Bert, he went down the room, and disappeared through the door that led into his own apartments.
"My gracious!" exclaimed Bert, in alarm. "Surely he is not going to leave me here all alone in the dark. I'll jump out of the window if he does."
But that was not the master's idea, for shortly he returned with two candles, placed one on either side of Bert's desk, then went to his desk, drew forth the long, black strap, whose cruel sting Bert had not felt for years, and standing in front of the quaking boy, looking the very type of unrelenting sternness, said:
"You shall not leave your seat until your composition is finished, and if you have not made a beginning inside of five minutes you may expect punishment."
So saying, he strode off into the darkness, and up and down the long room, now filled with strange shadows, swishing the strap against the desks as he passed to and fro. Bert's feelings may be more easily imagined than described. Hungry, weary, frightened, he grasped his pen with trembling fingers, and bent over the paper.
For the first minute or two not a word was written. Then, as if struck by some happy thought, he scribbled down a title quickly and paused. In a moment more he wrote again, and soon one whole paragraph was done.
The five minutes having elapsed, the doctor emerged from the gloom and came up to see what progress had been made. He looked over Bert's shoulder at the crooked lines that straggled over half the page, but he could not have read more than the title, when the shadows of the great empty room were startled by a peal of laughter that went echoing through the darkness, and clapping the boy graciously upon his back, the master said:
"That will do, Lloyd. The title is quite sufficient. You may go now;" for he had a keen sense of humour and a thorough relish of a joke, and the subject selected by Bert was peculiarly appropriate, being "Necessity is the Mother of Invention."
Mr. Lloyd was so delighted with Bert's ingenuity that thenceforth he gave him very effective assistance in the preparation of his weekly essays, and they were no longer the bugbear that they had been.
It was not long after this that Bert had an experience with the law not less memorable.