"Is that you, Dick?" exclaimed the wounded boy, looking up as Dick bent over him in the moonlight. "Did you do it?"
"No, I didn't," said Dick. "I say, old fellow, is it much! I wish his pistols had been buried before I'd brought 'em out!"
"How was it all? Whose are the pistols?" questioned Talbot. And Mr. Dick, in an ecstasy of contrition, but vowing vengeance against the shooter, whoever it might be, entered on his explanation. To do him justice, he gave it without the least reserve. And Tom Smart, shivering amid the thickest trees, at a safe distance, daring to stir neither one way nor the other, lest he should be seen, and who had not heard the salutation, wondered whether Dick would keep his word, and not mention his name in connection with the calamity.
A fine commotion arose in the college when Mr. Henry got back with the news. One of the gentlemen had been shot in the plantation!—shot by a fellow student! It was incredible. Mr. Henry, breaking away from the throng, quietly gave Dr. Brabazon an account of the whole, as far as he was cognizant of it: how that he had heard a shot quite close to him, followed by a cry, and had caught a glimpse of a youth stealing away. He gave no clue as to who the youth was; apparently did not know; and of course could not know positively that it was he who had fired; he recognized him as belonging to Orville College by the cap. It was but a hurried explanation; there was no time to waste in question and answer; Talbot must be seen to.
He was brought in on a hurdle, and a surgeon summoned. On the first day of this boy's entrance at the college, when Dr. Brabazon, the roll before him, asked his name, the answer was, "James Talbot." "James Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury?" jokingly responded the doctor, in allusion to one noted in English history; and from that hour Talbot had gone by no other name in the school. Of a good-natured, generous disposition, he was ever ready to do a kind action, and was liked immensely. Not that he had much to be generous with in one sense: his father was a banker's clerk; very poor; struggling with life; and pinching himself in all ways to keep his son at Orville.
Not during the first confusion did a suspicion, that the offending pistol could have any connection with a certain brown paper treasure-parcel upstairs, penetrate to the brain of Loftus major: not until Dick's name arose into prominence. Up to his room stepped Mr. Loftus, six stairs at a stride, pulled open a drawer, essayed to lay his hands upon the parcel, and—found it was not there. He could not believe his own eyes; he stared, he felt, he stood in a mazed sort of bewilderment. Meddle with his things! that wretched Dick, who was nearly three years his junior, and held at arm's-length accordingly!—with his new pistols, that were only brought en cachette! When Loftus major recovered his equanimity sufficiently to think, he came to the conclusion that hanging would be too good for Dick.
[CHAPTER II.]
The New Boy.
The Rev. Mr. Jebb and the new German master stood over the bed of James Talbot. The surgeon had been busy; he had extracted the shots from the leg, and pronounced the injury to be not material. Talbot must be kept quiet, he said, both in mind and body.
"It's a very strange affair," murmured the clergyman into Mr. Henry's ear. "Dr. Brabazon's opinion is, that it must have been Loftus minor, after all, who fired off the pistol."
"It never was, then," unceremoniously spoke up the patient. "When Dick Loftus says he didn't do a thing, I know he didn't."