"So you're Linton's brother Paul, eh? Cheer up, little chap; we'll see they're not too hard upon you."
Paul's pale face brightened, and looking up with a grateful glance, he said, softly:
Teter laughed at being "sirred," and went off, feeling quite pleased with himself.
According to the custom of the school, Paul would be hoisted at the mid-day recess of the following day, and the boys looked forward eagerly to the struggle for which they had been preparing. During the morning their thoughts clearly were not upon the lessons, and so many mistakes were made that the shrewd doctor suspected there must be something brewing, but preferred to let it reveal itself rather than to interfere by premature questions. He was a profound student of human nature, and especially of boy nature. He knew his boys as thoroughly as an Eastern shepherd ever knew his sheep. They were like open books before him, and in this perhaps more than in anything else lay the secret of his rare success as a teacher.
When the eagerly expected recess came, all the boys, with the exception of a small group, poured out tumultuously into the street, and ranged themselves in two bands in close proximity to the door. The group that remained consisted of the two Lintons, Bert, Frank, and Teter, the latter three constituting a sort of body-guard for poor timorous little Paul, who shrank in terror from the ordeal, the nature of which in truth he did not fully understand. Having consulted together for a minute or two, the body-guard then moved out through the door, taking care to keep Paul in the middle. As they emerged into the street, a kind of hum of suppressed excitement rose from the crowd awaiting them, followed immediately by cries of "Hoist him! hoist him!" uttered first by Graham and Wilding, and quickly taken up by their supporters.
Pale with fright, Paul cowered close to Teter, while Bert and Frank stood in front of him, and their supporters quickly encircled them. Then came the struggle. Graham and Wilding and their party bore down upon Paul's defenders, and sought to break their way through them to reach their intended victim. Of course, no blows were struck. The boys all knew better than to do that; but pushing, hauling, wrestling, very much after the fashion of football players in a maul, the one party strove to seize Paul, who indeed offered no more resistance than an ordinary football, and the other to prevent his being carried off. For some minutes the issue was uncertain, although the hoisting party considerably outnumbered the anti-hoisting party. More than once did Graham and Wilding force their way into the centre of Paul's defenders, and almost have him in their grasp, only to be thrust away again by the faithful trio that stood about him like the three of whom Macaulay's ringing ballad tells: