Ande Trembath: A Tale of Old Cornwall England

by Matthew Stanley Kemp

"He was shot in the van of a fight between Armstrong's troops and the French. They found his body and recognised it by letters from England. He had on a French officer's uniform and a commission in the French army in his pocket. They brought him home, and Sir Richard Lanyan brought the facts to the knowledge of the government, and the Trembath home was confiscated, and they were driven out. It served them right, I say."

"That it did," asserted Tenny.

"And here's one of the family, this Ande, that's lord ing it over us. I believe it was he that soaked my gown in that beastly rye and got me in such a scrape with the head."

Tenny smiled, for he had no love for Creakle, except as a tool.

"It was no laughing matter, I can tell you. The head nearly fired me," said Creakle, a little sullenly.

"Come, come, no offence. I have as much reason to dislike Trembath as you have. Didn't he sneak into being head of the fifth through meanness, getting up and reciting, when all the rest of the fellows had agreed to refuse to recite. He has been there ever since, but he never would have got there if he hadn't turned traitor to his form, like his father and grandfather to the government. Blood will tell."

"And, I say, we ought to let the fellows know, and pull him down a peg or two. Let him know his place among the sons of honourable Englishmen. He ought to be sent to Coventry, I say."

"Come over here and we'll talk it over with one or two of the fellows," said Tenny.

A little coterie of fellows of the fifth form were soon assembled around Tenny and Creakle, on the Bowling Green, and their nodding heads and colloquy portended mischief to the head of the fifth. Tenny had never forgotten the way in which he was shouldered out of the headship of the fifth form, and Creakle was burning with more hate since his late disgrace, which he blamed on Ande. Now, had it depended upon Creakle alone, nothing would have come of the disclosure of the stain upon Ande's name, but when Tenny took up the matter it was eagerly listened to. The latter portrayed in indignant tones the treachery of Ande's family to the government. Should they consort with him, after this knowledge? It was all well enough, as long as they did not know the family disgrace. But, now they knew, they ought to show their abhorrence of such conduct.

He ought to be expelled from the school, but they couldn't do that, but they could, at least, debar him from fellowship and keep him from the leadership in the form that he had always maintained. The son and grandson of a traitor shall not lead us in our sports. He was a traitor at heart, like his people before him, for had he not gained the headship of the form through an act of treason to his fellows, and his remarks of the injustice of the king also bore testimony. Such was the line of Tenny's sophistry, in which Creakle was a second.