Follow My Leader: The Boys of Templeton

by Talbot Baines Reed

Any one else might have been afraid of the task before him, and doubtful of success. Mansfield was neither; at any rate, as far as any one else could see. He set himself up neither for a Hercules nor a Galahad. It never occurred to him what he was. But it did occur to him that Templeton wanted reform, and that the Captain of Templeton ought to reform it. And with that one clear purpose before him, Mansfield was the sort of fellow to go straight through thick and thin to reach it, or perish in the attempt.

They say that when a certain Russian Emperor wanted a railway made between the two chief cities of his dominion, and was asked what route it should take, so as to benefit the largest number of intervening towns and villages, he called for a map and ruler, and drawing a straight line between the two places, said, “Let it go that way.”

That was pretty much the style of Mansfield. He didn’t understand turning to right or left to give anybody a lift on the way. All he knew was that Templeton was not up to the mark, and that Templeton must be brought up to the mark. Between those points he ruled his straight line, and that way he meant to go.

If the line cut a snug little set of chums in half, if it turned one or two settled school customs out of house and home, if it sent one or two waverers hopelessly over to the wrong side—well, so be it. It was a pity, especially if the innocent had to suffer with the guilty. But the good of Templeton was at stake, and woe to the traitor who thought anything more important than that!

Dear old Ponty, whom Templeton had never loved so much as when it missed him, had curled his line about in snug, comfortable ins-and-outs, so as not to disturb anybody. Mansfield didn’t think himself better than Ponty, whom he loved as a brother. But Mansfield couldn’t draw curling in-and-out lines. He only knew one line, and that was a straight one; and so, for better or worse, Mansfield called for his map and his ruler, and dashed into his task.

“Give the little chaps a chance,” Ponty had said, in his last will and testament, and the new Captain of Templeton was willing to make one little curve, in order to carry out his friend’s wish.

On the fourth evening of the term, as the Den was assembled in full session, for the purpose of swearing in Coote and denouncing the powers that be, that honourable fraternity was startled out of its never superabundant wits by an apparition far more terrible than the Templeton Ghost.

Dick was in the chair at the time, and Heathcote was in the act of moving a resolution, “That this Den considers all the monitors ought to be hanged, and hopes they will be,” when the Captain of Templeton suddenly entered the room.

Then fell there a silence on the Den, like to the silence of a kennel of dogs when the whip of the master cracks! The word “hanged” died half-uttered on the lips of Heathcote, and Dick slipped aghast from his eminence. The tongue of Coote clave to the roof of his mouth, and even Gosse’s heart turned to stone in the midst of a “swop.” Never did condemned criminals stand more still, or wax-works more dumb.

Mansfield closed the door behind him, and marched straight to the top of the room, where stood Dick’s vacant chair. Was he going to drive them out single-handed? Was he going to arrest their leader? Or was he going to make a speech?