In School and Out Part 3

"My name is Richard Grant," replied the broker's son, sullenly, and with the feeling that he had sacrificed all his manhood by giving up the point.

"Ah, then you are the son of Mr. Grant, of Woodville!" sneered Mr.

Batterman. "I don't wonder you didn't want to tell your name, for stealing melons isn't a very respectable business."

"I am willing to pay for the melons, and let the matter drop where it is," said Richard, who was so far humbled as to be willing to compromise with the owner of the stolen fruit.

"I am not exactly willing to let the matter drop where it is. You are the son of a rich and respectable man, and you ought to know better than to steal; and I am going to give you a lesson which I hope you will profit by."

"I will pay double price for all the melons, if you will let me go."

"I wouldn't let you go if you would pay ten times the value of the melons. I want to teach you better than to steal; and when I've done with you, I don't believe you will want to steal any more of my fruit."

"What are you going to do?" demanded Richard, very much disturbed by the decided tones of the farmer.

"I'm going to give you a sound thrashing."

"No, you are not," said Richard, who would rather have died on the spot than submit to the humiliation of a flogging.

"You will see whether I am or not. It's no kind of use for me to take a rich man's son like you before the court. Your father would pay your fine, and you would laugh in your sleeve, and call it a good joke."

"You have no right to flog me," protested Richard.

"Perhaps I haven't; but I'm going to do it, if I have to suffer myself for it. I am going to have the satisfaction of curing you of stealing my melons."

Bates had taken hold of Sandy again, and Mr. Batterman prepared to make good his promise. By the light of the lantern Richard saw the hard face of the farmer. It was stern and forbidding, and he felt that he meant all he had said. How could the son of the owner of Woodville submit to the disgrace of being whipped? At home he was treated with respect and consideration. The servants took off their hats to him. His father, in his sternest moments, had never hinted such a thing as corporal punishment.

It seemed absolutely impossible for him to submit to the farmer's terrible remedy, but there was no way to avoid it. He had offered to compromise, but nothing would satisfy his relentless captor. The punishment was to be inflicted in the spirit of revenge rather than from a sense of duty, which made it all the more intolerable to think of. He was not to be whipped for his own or the public good, but to satisfy the malice and revenge of "Old Batterbones."

He decided not to submit to the infliction; but he might as well have decided not to let the sun rise on the following morning, or to stop the Hudson in its majestic flow to the sea. His own experience, so dearly bought in the garden, had shown him that he was utterly incapable of any successful resistance. He looked around him for the means of escape, and racked his brain for some expedient that would enable him to checkmate his unwieldy opponent; but he looked in vain, and thought in vain. There was nothing upon which to hang even the faintest hope of resistance or escape.

The farmer held him by the collar, and the terrible instrument of torture was raised over his head. It fell, and Richard writhed with the pain, not of the body alone, for the blow seemed to penetrate to his soul. It lacerated his pride, his self-respect, more than it did his legs. He trembled like an aspen leaf, as much from intense emotion as from the smart of the stroke.

Richard was no coward, but he would have begged off, if he could have done so with any prospect of success; but he might as well have pleaded with the ocean to hold back its destructive waves, as with Mr.

Batterman to stay his hand, before his revenge was satisfied. Another and another blow fell. The pain was so severe that the culprit could not endure it, and the quick-falling strokes soon kindled a fire in his soul which neither prudence nor policy could check. It burst out in a raging flame of pa.s.sion, which caused him to roar like a mad bull, and to kick, bite, and struggle like an imprisoned tiger.

All this resistance only added to the spite of his persecutor and he laid on the blows till his own strength failed him. In vain Sandy remonstrated with Richard upon the folly of his course, and begged him to keep cool, as though a severe flogging was one of the light afflictions of this world, that may be endured with patience by a philosophical temperament.

"Old Batterbones" had exhausted himself in the struggle. His "wind" was gone; and he gave up because he could do no more, rather than because he was satisfied with the extent of the punishment.

"There, Mr. Richard Grant, of Woodville, when you want to steal any more melons of mine, think of that," said the farmer, as he cast the culprit from him.

"You'll have to pay for this," groaned Richard, who felt as though he had endured all the tortures of the Inquisition.

"Perhaps I shall," puffed Mr. Batterman; "but if you have got enough to make you a wiser and a better boy, I shall be perfectly satisfied."

"I'll be revenged on you for this, if it costs me my life," exclaimed Richard, whose soul smarted even more than his body.

"Shut up, now!" said the farmer, angrily, "or I'll give you some more."

Richard did shut up, for the incident had developed a grain of discretion in his composition, if nothing better--though nothing better could be expected from a flogging inflicted in the spirit of malice.

"Now, my boy," said the farmer, turning to Sandy, when he had in some measure recovered his breath, "we will see what we can do for you. You are not a fool like the other fellow, and your wisdom will serve you a good turn."

Sandy made no remark in reply to this speech of Mr. Batterman. He had made up his mind to submit with all the philosophy he could bring to his aid. He had been flogged before. It was not a new inst.i.tution to him, as it had been to his companion in iniquity. He looked upon a flogging as one of the necessary evils to which a fast boy must submit; and though he did not think it was all for the best, he was disposed to make the best of it. The thrashing was the gate by which he was to escape from a bad sc.r.a.pe.

The farmer bore less malice towards him than towards his friend. He had offered no resistance, and been measurably humble under the discipline of misfortune. The blows were lighter and less in number, and when a dozen strokes had been administered, Mr. Batterman was satisfied, and so expressed himself. At the same time he volunteered an opinion that Richard was the real sinner, and had led the other into the mischief--a position which Sandy took no pains to controvert.

But Sandy, though he was a philosopher, and an embryo man of the world, did not submit to his punishment in silence. He was not a Stoic, and every blow extorted from him a cry of pain, which was as politic as it was necessary. He labored to convince the farmer that he was suffering severely from the castigation, so that he might be the sooner satisfied with what had been done. Compared with that which Richard had received, his whipping was light. When it was finished, he was surprised that he had got off with so little; and he congratulated himself upon the strategy which had so sensibly diminished his portion.

"Now, boys, you can go. If you are satisfied, I am; and when you want to steal any more of my fruit, just remember my treatment of fruit thieves," said the farmer.

"You haven't seen the end of this yet," replied Richard, as he moved off, his skin and his proud spirit smarting in unison.

"You haven't seen the end of it either, if you don't keep a civil tongue in your head."

Richard was tempted to enter immediately upon the work of revenging himself for what he had suffered, and when the farmer spoke, he picked up a couple of stones, with the intention of throwing them at his tormentor; but Sandy, cool and self-possessed in the hour of tribulation, dissuaded him from this insane course.

"No use, d.i.c.k; drop the stones, and we will pay him off at another time, when we can do so without danger."

Richard listened to this prudent advice, and concluded to adopt it, though he was impatient to be revenged upon the farmer. He was not satisfied with Sandy. He had not been sustained in his resistance to the barbarous conduct of their captor. He thought his companion had been tame and mean-spirited, he had submitted so quietly to his punishment; and when they had got out of the hearing of Mr. Batterman, he roundly reproached him for his pusillanimous demeanor.

"I don't want to call you any hard names, d.i.c.k, but in my humble opinion, you were a downright fool," replied Sandy. "It's no sort of use to pound a stone wall with your naked fist. You don't hurt the wall any."

"I like to see a fellow show some spirit," growled Richard. "I thought you had some s.p.u.n.k; but you caved in, and took your flogging as meekly as though you had been one of the saints in Fox's Book of Martyrs."

"I don't know any thing about your martyrs, but I hadn't any notion of getting a double licking, as you did. You got four times as much as I did, just because you were fool enough to resist. If there had been any use in fighting, I would have fought as big as you did."

"I like to see a fellow stand by another when he gets into a sc.r.a.pe,"

whined Richard.

"Do you mean to say I didn't stand by you? Did I run away from you?"

demanded Sandy, indignantly.

"You couldn't run away. The man held you fast, or you would have done so."

"It's very easy for you to talk. I did all I could to make you act like a reasonable fellow; but you were bound to be a fool, and you got all you bargained for."

Richard made no reply to his companion's taunts, for his philosophy was beginning to commend itself to his common sense, as he thought of the difference in the two floggings, and realized that it was all owing to his own stupidity. They walked along in silence, till they reached the Greyhound, but still with "thoughts too big for utterance."

"A pretty condition I am in to go home," said Richard, as he took his place at the helm.

"You will be all right in a day or two," replied Sandy, consolingly.

"What will my father say?"

"If you are fool enough to let him know about it, I don't care what he says."

"How can I help it? The blood is running down my legs now. My skin is all cut up."