But by the time the French class had been in session a week, Jack began to feel unutterably lonesome. Matt was in the class; so was lame Joey Wilson, who was always a pleasant companion; the Pinkshaw twins, who had no equal as tree-climbers, were also there, and so was big Frank Parker, whose superior strength and wisdom were not to be despised. Jack gave unwonted attention to the family garden so as to be within sound of the mid-morning intermission, and when the teacher's bell summoned the boys back to school again, Jack not unfrequently sat upon the school wood-pile during the long hour which ensued before the dismissal which brought him and the boys together again. Then satan began to find mischief for Jack's idle hands, and small pebbles not unfrequently flew into the open windows of the school-room, occasioning pleasing diversions for the boys and annoyance for the teacher. Every body knew who threw them, but when questioned by the teacher they all, with general mental reservation, professed utter ignorance. The exile-teacher was not of the best temper, so he took his stand near a window, with the text-book in one hand and half a brick in the other, but Jack, warned by friendly hands hanging out of the windows of the side upon which the teacher stood, operated from the other side and occasioned many spirited races against time, the teacher's course being across the schoolroom, while Jack's goal was the friendly shelter of the schoolhouse porch. But even this diversion grew tiresome, and Jack, from pure loneliness, finally came to sneaking up the stairway, sitting on the floor of the hall, and listening by the hour to what to him seemed the idiotic jabber of his late schoolmates.
Then listening itself grew tiresome; besides, the position was uncomfortable, so one day Jack climbed up the little hatchway which led to the cockpit and belfry, laid a board across several beams, stretched himself upon it, and listened at ease, for there were sundry cracks in the ceiling. Jack was not long in discovering that one of these cracks, in its meanderings, passed directly over the teacher's chair, and that sundry small fragments of plaster could be scratched from its sides and dropped upon the exile's head.