Glyn Severn's Schooldays Part 46

"Nothing, sir," replied Glyn, "for just then the first bell rang."

"What?" exclaimed the Doctor.

"And I started up in bed, sir. It was all a dream."

"A dream!" cried the Doctor angrily. "Why, my good lad--"

"But it was all so real, sir, and I was thinking about it all day yesterday, and that perhaps it's possible that I really did do it walking in my sleep."

"Oh, impossible!" cried the Doctor.

"I don't know, sir," said the boy; "but you see, I might have done so."

"Well--yes, you might," said the Doctor slowly. "I did have a pupil once who was troubled with somnambulism. He used to walk into the next dormitory and scare the other boys.--Oh, but this is impossible!"

"I thought you'd say so, sir."

"Yes," said the Doctor, "impossible. Why, if it were true the belt must have been lying at the bottom of the well ever since the cricket-match weeks ago."

"Yes, sir, and I must have done it then in my sleep; and the night before last I dreamed again what I dreamed before."

"Tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the Doctor, rising now from his chair and beginning to walk to and fro excitedly. "Strange--most strange, and I feel sceptical in the extreme. It must all be imagination. An empty dream, brought about by the worry and anxiety of this unfortunate loss. Well, I am glad you have come, my boy, and--er-- er--I must be frank with you. Your manner and the strangeness of your words half made me think that you had come, urged by your conscience, to make a confession of a very different kind."

Glyn started; his lips parted, and he looked wildly in the Doctor's eyes.

"Don't look at me like that, my lad. Your manner suggested it, and I cannot tell you how relieved I feel."

As the Doctor spoke he leaned over his writing-table and caught the boy's hand in his, to press it warmly.

"But," he said, as he subsided once more into his chair, "this must be a hallucination, an offspring of an overworked brain; and yet there are strange things in connection with the mental organisation, and I feel as if I ought to take some steps. What a relief it would be, my boy, to us all, the clearing away of a load of ungenerous suspicion. But one word: whom have you told of this?"

"No one, sir," said Glyn.

"Not even Mr Singh?"

"No, sir. I have been ever since yesterday thinking about what I ought to do, and I came to the conclusion at last that I ought to come to you, sir."

"Quite right, my boy; quite right."

"But it was very hard work, sir--very hard indeed."

"Yes, yes; so I suppose," said the Doctor thoughtfully; "and you have placed a problem before me, my boy, that I feel is as difficult to resolve. I am very, very glad that you have kept it in your own breast, Severn; and the more I think of it the more I feel that it is only an intangible vapour of the brain. But, all the same, the matter is so mysterious and so important that I should not be doing my duty if I did not have the well examined."

"You will, sir?" cried the boy eagerly.

"Yes, Severn, I will," said the Doctor firmly, "and at once. But this must be a private matter between us two. Let those who like consider the act eccentric; I shall have it done, and I look to you to take no one else into your confidence over the matter."

"No, sir; I'll not say a word," cried Glyn. "But,"--he hesitated--"but--"

"Well, Severn; speak out."

"If it all turns out fancy, all imagination, sir, you will not be angry?"

"No, Severn, not in the least," said the Doctor, smiling. "Now go and send Wrench to me."

As he spoke the Doctor turned and rang, with the consequence that Glyn met the footman in the pa.s.sage coming to answer the bell, and half an hour later, when the boy made it his business to casually stroll towards the well-house, he heard voices, and on looking in found Wrench, who had changed his livery for an old pair of trousers and vest, talking to the gardener and making plans for the emptying of the well.

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO.

THE DOCTOR'S DICTUM.

"It'd take a month," said the gardener, as Glyn was coming up. "Don't tell me! Should think I know more about wells than you do. Fast as you take a bucketful out another one runs in. You go and tell him that if he means to have the old well emptied we shall want half-a-dozen men, for we could never do it by oursens."

"Yah!" cried Wrench; "such fellows as you gardeners are. It's always the same old tune: more help, more help.--Hear him, Mr Severn, sir? I expect the water isn't so clear as it has been, and the Doctor says he will have the well emptied and cleaned out.--Look here, Taters, you can go and tell the Doctor that if you like; I am going to work."

"Oh, I shan't tell him," growled the gardener. "I aren't afraid of a bit of wuck; only, mark my words, as I says again, it'd take a month."

The unusual task did not take a month; but after a hard day's toil so little progress had been made, and Wrench's indoor work had come to such a standstill, that the Doctor gave orders for the gardener to get the a.s.sistance of a couple of labouring men, when the water was so much lowered at the end of the next day that unless a great deal filtered in during the coming night there was a fair prospect of the bottom being reached before long.

By a tacit understanding with the Doctor, Glyn was excused from lessons during the clearing out of the well, and spent his time watching the emptying of every bucketful as it was wound slowly up; and it was put about by Slegge that Glyn had been planted there by the Doctor to keep the juniors off for fear any of them should tumble down.

It was an anxious task for the boy, who had to resist appeal after appeal made by Singh to come and join him in some sport or go for a walk. But Glyn kept fast to his post, watching in vain, and without much hope, for if the case was there it would probably be sunk in the mud. One hour he found himself full of faith in the belief that there was something in his dream, and the next he thought that it was all nonsense.

And so the days pa.s.sed on, with Glyn paying constant visits to the well-house, where Wrench went on toiling away; while, in spite of the sloppiness of the place, his big tom-cat came regularly to perch himself upon a shelf, and with his big eyes looking fierce and glowing in the semi-darkness of the building, he seemed to look upon it as his duty to see that all went on steadily and well.

The sixth day had come round, and the gardener reiterated with a grin, as he stared grimly at Glyn, "Ah, we shan't be done yet. It's my opinion that it will take a month; and that's what the ganger thinks too."

"The ganger?" said Glyn. "Who's he?"

"Him," said Wrench, with a sidewise nod in the direction of his feline favourite, who was crouched together in the spot he had selected for looking on.

"Oh, nonsense!" cried Glyn.

"Ah, you may call it nonsense; but you know, Mr Severn, I shouldn't be at all surprised if that cat thinks. It's my opinion that he knows there's holes somewhere down below, just above where the water used to be, and that sooner or later if he waits patiently he will see some of them as lives there come up in the empty bucket for him to hunt."

"And what are they that live down there?" said Glyn.

"Rats, sir--rats."

There was some colour given to Slegge's a.s.sertion that Glyn was there to keep the juniors from tumbling down; for the slow, steady lowering and drawing up of the big buckets had a peculiar fascination for some of the youngest boys, notably the little set whose playtime was nearly all monopolised by hard work--to wit, the bowling and fielding for Slegge.

Their anxiety was wonderful. If Glyn was not constantly on the watch, one or other would be getting in the men's way, to peer down into the darkness or rush to where the full buckets were emptied into a drain.

On commencing work upon the sixth morning the water was found to be so lowered that the big buckets had to be removed from rope and chains, for they would not descend far enough to fill. So they were replaced by small ordinary pails; and, the work becoming much lighter, they were wound up and down at a much more rapid rate.

"We shan't be long now, Mr Severn, sir," said Wrench, for each pail as it came up had for its contents half-water and half-mud, the sediment of many, many years. And at last Glyn's heart began to throb, for hanging out over the side of the last-raised bucket was a long length of muddy string.