Part 20 (1/2)
”And that when the lad to join you in any amusement or excursion I ask you, then, is it fair, when you see I am unwell, to make my endeavours to help you a painful toil, from your carelessness and inattention?”
”No, Mr Deane,” said Vince quickly; ”it's too bad, and I'm very sorry
There!”
”Thank you, Burnet,” said the tutor, s ”It's what I expected from your frank, manly nature”
”Oh, and I'htly, for the speaker had not called him frank andat both in turn; ”and I suppose I ought to apologise for insisting upon seeing that paper I a a nature as I thought for on Michael Ladelle's part, though I am sorry that you, Burnet, treated the note he passed you in so ribald a way 'You be hanged!' is hardly a gentle to a historical memorandum or query such as this: 'Lanthorn and rope' Of course, I see the turn your thoughts had taken, Michael”
The boys stared at hio of watching the the to take lanthorn and rope that afternoon?
”Of course, history is a grand study,” continued the tutor, ”and I a in that direction; but I like to be thorough When we are having lessons on history let us give our ebra let us try to lad, though, that you recall our reading; but try, Michael, to remember some of the other important parts of French history, and don't let your mind dwell too much upon the horrors of the Revolution It is very terrible, all that about the excesses of the entry--_A bas les aristocrates_! and their cry, _A la lanterne_! Yes: very terrible those ruthless executions with the lanthorn and the rope But now, please, I have finished that coo on with yours”
The two lads bent do earnestly to their work, and with a little help mastered the puzzle which had seemed hopeless a short tilided away rapidly, and Vince hurried off ho, which was to be at the side of the dwarf-oak wood, to which each was to make his way so as not to excite attention, and in case, as Vince still believed, Daygo really was keeping an eye upon their ht as much,” said Vince aloud, as he reached the appointed place, with a good-sized creel in his hand, the ha in a belt under his jersey, like a pair of hidden weapons ”I'd go by myself if I had the rope”
”And lanthorn,” said Mike, raising his head fro hidden in a clump of heather
”Hullo, then!” cried Vince joyously ”I didn't see you there But, I say: lanthorn and rope! I felt as if I ”
”Yes: wasn't it comic?”
”I felt that Ito cheat hi the wrong idea
I'd have told hi if everybody knows But co on a stone ”I want to look all round first without see us”
”If he is,” said Mike sagely, ”you won't see him, for he'll be squatted down by soular old fox Let's go on at once But where's the lanthorn?”
”Never youon it Nohere's the light?”
”In the creel here,” was the reply Then without further parley they plunged into the wood, and, profiting by forh it into the rocky chaos beyond; threaded their way in and out a the blocks, till at last with very little difficulty they found their bearings, and, after one or two misses in a place where the similarity of the stones and tufts of furze and bra, noted how the old watercourse was completely covered in with bralance upward along the slope and ridge, to stand the next minute sheltered from the wind and in the semi-darkness
CHAPTER TEN
A VENTURESOME JOURNEY
”Mind how you go,” said Mike in a subdued voice, for the darkness and reverberation following the kicking of a loose pebble iht: it's only a stone It was just down there that I slipped to Ahoy!”
He shouted softly, with one hand to hisaway from them to echo far beneath their feet
”I say, don't do that,” said Mike excitedly