Chapter 65 - Page 2

overreached--which he
would be, if implicated by Riderhood, and punished by the law for
his abject failure, as though it had been a success--he kept close in
his school during the day, ventured out warily at night, and went
no more to the railway station. He examined the advertisements in
the newspapers for any sign that Riderhood acted on his hinted
threat of so summoning him to renew their acquaintance, but found
none. Having paid him handsomely for the support and
accommodation he had had at the Lock House, and knowing him
to be a very ignorant man who could not write, he began to doubt
whether he was to be feared at all, or whether they need ever meet
again.

All this time, his mind was never off the rack, and his raging sense
of having been made to fling himself across the chasm which
divided those two, and bridge it over for their coming together,
never cooled down. This horrible condition brought on other fits.
He could not have said how many, or when; but he saw in the faces
of his pupils that they had seen him in that state, and that they
were possessed by a dread of his relapsing.

One winter day when a slight fall of snow was feathering the sills
and frames of the schoolroom windows, he stood at his black
board, crayon in hand, about to commence with a class; when,
reading in the countenances of those boys that there was something
wrong, and that they seemed in alarm for him, he turned his eyes
to the door towards which they faced. He then saw a slouching
man of forbidding appearance standing in the midst of the school,
with a bundle under his arm; and saw that it was Riderhood.

He sat down on a stool which one of his boys put for him, and he
had a passing knowledge that he was in danger of falling, and that
his face was becoming distorted. But, the fit went off for that time,
and he wiped his mouth, and stood up again.

'Beg your pardon, governor! By your leave!' said Riderhood,
knuckling his forehead, with a chuckle and a leer. 'What place
may this be?'

'This is a school.'

'Where young folks learns wot's right?' said Riderhood, gravely
nodding. 'Beg your pardon, governor! By your leave! But who
teaches this school?'

'I do.'

'You're the master, are you, learned governor?'

'Yes. I am the master.'

'And a lovely thing it must be,' said Riderhood, 'fur to learn young
folks wot's right, and fur to know wot THEY know wot you do it.
Beg your pardon, learned governor! By your leave!--That there
black board; wot's it for?'

'It is for drawing on, or writing on.'

'Is it though!' said Riderhood. 'Who'd have thought it, from the
looks on it! WOULD you be so kind as write your name upon it,
learned governor?' (In a wheedling