CHAPTER XV. — A SPLASH IN THE RIVER.
Amongst other facts, patent to common and uncommon sense, is the very obvious one that a man cannot be in two places at once. In like manner, no author, that I ever heard of, was able to relate two different portions of his narrative at one and the same time. Thus you will readily understand, that if I devoted the last chapter to Mr. Galloway, his clerks and their concerns generally, it could not be given to Mr. Ketch and his concerns; although in the strict order of time and sequence, the latter gentleman might have claimed an equal, if not a premier right.
Mr. Ketch stood in his lodge, leaning for support upon the shut-up press-bedstead, which, by day, looked like a high chest of drawers with brass handles, his eyes fixed on the keys, hanging on the opposite nail. His state of mind may be best expressed by the strong epithet, “savage.” Mr. Ketch had not a pleasant face at the best of times: it was yellow and withered; and his small bright eyes were always dropping water; and the two or three locks of hair, which he still possessed, were faded, and stood out, solitary and stiff, after the manner of those pictures you have seen of heathens who decorate their heads with upright tails. At this moment his countenance looked particularly unpleasant.
Mr. Ketch had spent part of the night and the whole of this morning revolving the previous evening’s affair of the cloisters. The more he thought of it, the less he liked it, and the surer grew his conviction that the evil had been the work of his enemies, the college boys.
“It’s as safe as day,” he wrathfully soliloquized. “There be the right keys,” nodding to the two on the wall, “and there be the wrong ones,” nodding towards an old knife-tray, into which he had angrily thrown the rusty keys, upon entering his lodge last night, accompanied by the crowd. “They meant to lock me up all night in the cloisters, the wicked cannibals! I hope the dean’ll expel ‘em! I’ll make my complaint to the head-master, I will! Drat all college schools! there’s never no good done in ‘em!”
“How are you this morning, Ketch?”
The salutation proceeded from Stephen Bywater, who, in the boisterous manner peculiar to himself and his tribe, had flung open the door without the ceremony of knocking.
“I’m none the better for seeing you,” growled Ketch.
“You need not be uncivil,” returned Bywater, with great suavity. “I am only making a morning call upon you, after the fashion of gentlefolks; the public delights to pay respect to its officials, you know. How do you feel after that mishap last night? We can’t think, any of us, how you came to make the mistake.”
“I’ll ‘mistake’ you!” shrieked Ketch. “I kep’ a nasty old, rusty brace o’ keys in my lodge to take out, instead o’ the right ones, didn’t I?”