He paused a moment; then, greatly moved, he continued: "I have had schoolboys under my care for nearly thirty years, but I have never experienced anything like this before. It is not I alone who suffer; there are fathers and mothers who will be grieved beyond measure at this reckless conduct of their sons, for it is my plain duty to make that conduct known to them.
"To-night I can only hope that no harm will befall these rash adventurers; to-morrow they will doubtless be with us again, and in the hard, unhappy days that must come for them, we shall look to you, you who are wise, to lead them into right paths. From this time on, the honor of the school will rest on you."
He opened the book, and read a favorite selection from the Psalms; but in the prayer his voice broke, and his "Amen" was scarcely audible.
He went back across the room to his office; and the boys, some of them furtively wiping tears from their eyes, took up their evening tasks.
The next day passed in much the same way as the preceding one had done. Some one brought a morning paper down from the city, and an eager group read the reporter's vivid and somewhat amusing account of the rebellion and flight. A special telegram to the paper from New Hornbury, dated the previous night, was to the effect that the rebels had attended the circus at that town in a body, and from there had crossed the river by the rowboat ferry. The supposition was that they were on their way to New Bury.
About noon a rumor came floating down to the school that one of the row-boats containing the runaways had been swamped, and several of the boys drowned; but telegraphic inquiry resulted in a contradiction of this report later in the day.
No one was on the lookout for the home-coming now. The boys might return, or they might not. To imaginations which had for two days endured such a prodigious strain, nothing could seem any longer improbable. But how desolate it seemed at the school! How funereal everything was, how quiet! There were no games going on; there was no sound of merry voices, no boisterous laughter, no fun of any kind; but there were the empty benches, the eager faces, the thin ranks, the whispered conversations, the unusual monotony of the usual tasks. It was a dreary time.