“The rascal wants to knife me, and I am inclined to shake the bad blood out of him,” replied the mechanic.
“He is a lunatic: he is boiling over with bad passions. A few days in the brig will cool him off. We will treat him as a sick boy; and, when he gets better, we will talk with him. Possibly
there may be some reason in him when he is himself, if he ever is himself. If we can’t manage him, we will send him to the lunatic-asylum,” said the captain, as the carpenter dragged his prisoner out upon the deck.
Dory picked up the knife, and followed his uncle to the school-buildings in the rear of the mansion. Oscar could not stand the discipline of the burly Vermonter. He soon found, if he had not learned it before, that he was powerless in the hands of his persecutor; and he walked quietly in the direction he was led.
Captain Gildrock had expected to have some just such boys as Oscar Chester. In fact, he knew of this very one; for his uncle had applied to him to take him, as soon as he knew that he intended to open a mechanical institution. Mr. Chester was an old friend of the captain, to whom the latter had described his educational plan. This was the reason he happened to know all about Oscar, while he had taken pains not to be informed in regard to the antecedents of all his other pupils.
The founder of the new school understood men and boys thoroughly. Some of his scholars must
inevitably be rebellious and troublesome, and he had fully provided for the treatment of such cases. He had erected two temporary buildings, one of which was the dormitory and the other the workshop and schoolroom, the latter occupying the story over the former. The students were to take their meals in the large dining-room of the mansion.
The dormitory consisted of twenty-four sleeping-rooms, each of which had been furnished with an iron bedstead and such simple furniture as might be required. Nothing was extravagant, or even elegant; for the school was an experiment which might succeed or fail.
In a small brick building close to the shop, a steam-engine had already been set up, from which a belt extending into the shop was to run the lathes, circular-saws, planers, boring-machines, and other machinery. One part of the shop was for woodwork, and the other for iron. But most of the tools and apparatus had not yet been put in their places.
At one end of the dormitory was the “brig.” Captain Gildrock’s earliest experience at sea had been in the navy, where he had obtained his first