A Hero of Romance

by Richard Marsh

Perhaps his real, ideal, and favourite hero would have consisted of a judicious combination of the four--something of Dick Turpin, and something of Robin Hood, and something of Robinson Crusoe, and something of Jack the Giant-Killer. Take all these somethings and mix them well together, and you would have had the man for Bailey. Emphatically, although almost unconsciously, in all his waking dreams, a life of adventure had been the life for him.

Mr. George Washington Bankes had applied the match to the powder. As he thought of all that gentleman had said, even in the cool of the morning, all his soul was on fire. Seeing him in his nightshirt of doubtful cleanliness, and with his touzled hair, you might not have supposed that there was fire in his soul, but there was. Run away! He had heard of boys running away from school before to-day.

Boys had run away from Mecklemburg House, and there were stories of one who, within quite recent times, had made a dash for liberty. Some said he had got as far as Windsor, some said Dorking, before he had changed his mind and decided to come back again. But he had come back again. Bailey made up his mind that when he ran away he would never come back again; never! or, at any rate, not till he had traversed the world in several different directions, as Mr. George Washington Bankes had done.

It had already become a question of when he ran away. With that quickness in arriving at a decision which, so some tell us, is the sure sign of a commanding intellect, he had already decided that he would; there only remained the question of time and opportunity.

"Why don't you run away?" Mr. Bankes had asked. Yes, why, indeed? especially if one had only to run away to step at once into the Land of Golden Dreams!

When the boys took their places in the schoolroom after breakfast, prepared for morning school, a startling announcement was made to them by Mr. Fletcher. Bailey and his friends had expected that something would be said to them on the subject of their escapade of the night before; but so far, so far as those in authority were concerned, their expectations had been disappointed. They had been sufficiently cross-examined by their fellow-pupils, and in spite of a slight suggestive foreboding of something unpleasant to come, when they perceived how their proceedings appeared in the eyes of their colleagues, they were almost inclined to look upon themselves somewhat in the light of heroes. Griffin, indeed, had not heard the last of the pond, and it was not of the tragic side of his misadventure that he heard the most. There were some disagreeable remarks made by personal friends who would not see that he had run imminent risk of being drowned. He almost began to wish that he had been.

"You wouldn't have laughed at it then," he said. But they laughed at it now.

But neither from Mr. Till, nor from Mr. Shane, nor from Mr. Fletcher, nor from the far more terrible Mrs. Fletcher, had either of the young gentlemen heard a word.

And just when they were preparing for morning school Mr. Fletcher made his startling announcement.

At first the quartett thought, not unreasonably, that his remarks were going to have particular reference to them and to their misdoings, but they were wrong. The headmaster was seated at his desk, in a seemingly more than usually preoccupied mood; but he too often was preoccupied in school, so they paid no heed, and got out their books and slates, and other implements of study, with the ordinary din and clatter. Suddenly he spoke.