“Dunno, and don’t much care, curse him!” replied Marriner. “It would be laid to t’other chaps if he is.”
“But we ought to do something; get him some help,” urged Saurin, who had not become sufficiently hardened to like such devil’s work as this. “If he is living he will be frozen to death lying out such a night as this.”
“Oh, he will be all right!” said Marriner. “He’s only stunned a bit. He will come to in ten minutes and get up and walk home.”
“But can’t we leave word at his house, and then be off?”
“That would be a fool’s trick, that would. Why, it would bring suspicion on us, and if he is a gone coon—it’s impossible, you know, almost—but if he is, we should get scragged for it. Come, I didn’t think you was so chicken-hearted, or I wouldn’t have brought you out. Let’s get away home at once while we can, and don’t go a putting your neck in a halter for nowt.”
Fear overcame compunction, and Saurin turned and fled. How he got home he did not know, but he seemed to be at the back-door of the yard immediately almost. Then he steadied himself, went in, locked the door, and stole up to his room and to bed. He did not sleep that night. The face of the gamekeeper lying there in the moonlight haunted him. He wished, like Buller, but oh, much more fervently, that the whole business might turn out to have been a nightmare. But the morning dawned cold and grey, and he got up and dressed himself and went in to school, and it was all real. He could not fix his attention; his mind would wander to that coppice. Had the gamekeeper come to, tried to struggle up, fainted, fallen back, perished for want of a little assistance? Or had he got up, not much the worse, and had he seen his face clearly, and, recognising that it was a Weston boy, would he come to the school and ask to go round and pick him out?
“Saurin!”
It was only the voice of the master calling on him to go on with the construing, but he had so entirely forgotten where he was that he started and dropped his book, which caused a titter, for Saurin was not habitually either of a meditative or a nervous turn. He felt that he really must pull himself together or he would excite suspicion.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said; “my hands are numb, and I dropped the book. Where’s the place?” he added sotto voce to his neighbour.
“I think your attention was numb,” said the master.