"Sir, how did you know it was I?"
"Me, laddie, me. For thirty lean years have I wrestled with the tyranny of Miles Coverdale. Laddie, I am old and broken, but whensoever thou hast stripes laid upon thee for contumacy, whensoever thou breakest bounds or breakest heads, whensoever thou blasphemest in Pentecostal tongues, be assured that the Unsleeping Eye watcheth thee. And now Mr. Bracebridge would have speech of me."
O'Rane turned away, and Burgess addressed the newcomer.
"I'm starting an Army Class this term," he said. "I shall take Sinclair from your form."
"I didn't know he was thinking of the Army," answered Bracebridge.
Burgess fitted his latch-key into the door.
"The Lord will provide," he observed mournfully.
VI
The episode of the Shelton Greek Verse Prize marked a turning-point in O'Rane's early career at Melton and revealed to me for the first time his resourcefulness and concentrated determination no less than his innate and unconscious love of the dramatic. The story was all over the house that evening and was to spread throughout the school next day. Ishmael found himself of a sudden venerated and courted, and to do him justice he was far too young and human to remain uninfluenced. "Spitfire" dropped into desuetude as a nickname and was replaced by "Raney"; there were no more concerted "raggings" or resultant cut heads, and the former eccentricities of an outsider became the caprices of a hero. In a night and a morning O'Rane became a political leader.
The change was effected with little or no sacrifice of principle. He still came up for judgement before us once every ten days and was formally and efficiently chastised until the end of term, when he received his remove into the Sixth. The flow of his criticism was unchecked, but no longer so bitterly resented. With a little assistance from Sinclair and Mayhew, his social qualities were brought into play: we would hear his voice leading an unlawful sing-song in Middle Dormitory, occasionally he contributed to Mayhew's manuscript "Junior Mathesonian," and an echo of wild stories came to us with all the violence and bloodshed of the late Græco-Turkish War, to be followed by anecdotes of life in the Straits Settlements and Bret Harte tales of the Farther West. No one believed a half of what he said, but the stories—as stories—were good. His personality developed and lent weight to his opinions and criticism; he grew gradually more mellow, less alien in speech and habit of mind. His face became less thin, and the practice of promiscuous expectoration left him.