Cashel Byrons Profession | Page 7

unnecessary violence, and darted away at full speed.
Mr. Wilson, though he was soon conscious and able to rise, did not feel
disposed to stir for a long time. He began to moan with a dazed faith
that some one would eventually come to him with sympathy and
assistance. Five minutes elapsed, and brought nothing but increased
cold and pain. It occurred to him that if the police found him they
would suppose him to be drunk; also that it was his duty to go to them
and give them the alarm. He rose, and, after a struggle with dizziness
and nausea, concluded that his most pressing duty was to get to bed,
and leave Dr. Moncrief to recapture his ruffianly pupil as best he could.
Accordingly, at half-past one o'clock, the doctor was roused by a
knocking at his chamber-door, outside which he presently found his
professor of mathematics, bruised, muddy, and apparently inebriated.
Five minutes elapsed before Wilson could get his principal's mind on
the right track. Then the boys were awakened and the roll called. Byron
and Molesworth were reported absent. No one had seen them go; no
one had the least suspicion of how they got out of the house. One little
boy mentioned the skylight; but observing a threatening expression on
the faces of a few of the bigger boys, who were fond of fruit, he did not
press his suggestion, and submitted to be snubbed by the doctor for
having made it. It was nearly three o'clock before the alarm reached the
village, where the authorities tacitly declined to trouble themselves

about it until morning. The doctor, convinced that the lad had gone to
his mother, did not believe that any search was necessary, and
contented himself with writing a note to Mrs. Byron describing the
attack on Mr. Wilson, and expressing regret that no proposal having for
its object the readmission of Master Byron to the academy could be
entertained.
The pursuit was now directed entirely after Molesworth, an it wan plain,
from Mr. Wilson's narrative, that he had separated from Cashel outside
Panley. Information was soon forthcoming. Peasants in all parts of the
country had seen, they said, "a lad that might be him." The search
lasted until five o'clock next afternoon, when it was rendered
superfluous by the appearance of Gully in person, footsore and
repentant. After parting from Cashel and walking two miles, he had lost
heart and turned back. Half way to the cross roads he had reproached
himself with cowardice, and resumed his flight. This time he placed
eight miles betwixt himself and Moncrief House. Then he left the road
to make a short cut through a plantation, and went astray. After
wandering until morning, thinking dejectedly of the story of the babes
in the wood, he saw a woman working in a field, and asked her the
shortest way to Scotland. She had never heard of Scotland; and when
he asked the way to Panley she lost patience and threatened to set her
dog at him. This discouraged him so much that he was afraid to speak
to the other strangers whom he met. Having the sun as a compass, he
oscillated between Scotland and Panley according to the fluctuation of
his courage. At last he yielded to hunger, fatigue, and loneliness,
devoted his remaining energy to the task of getting back to school;
struck the common at last, and hastened to surrender himself to the
doctor, who menaced him with immediate expulsion. Gully was greatly
concerned at having to leave the place he had just run away from, and
earnestly begged the doctor to give him another chance. His prayer was
granted. After a prolonged lecture, the doctor, in consideration of the
facts that Gully had been seduced by the example of a desperate
associate, that he had proved the sincerity of his repentance by coming
back of his own accord, and had not been accessory to the concussion
of the brain from which Mr. Wilson supposed himself to be suffering,
accepted his promise of amendment and gave him a free pardon. It

should be added that Gully kept his promise, and, being now the oldest
pupil, graced his position by becoming a moderately studious, and, on
one occasion, even a sensible lad.
Meanwhile Mrs. Byron, not suspecting the importance of the doctor's
note, and happening to be in a hurry when it arrived, laid it by
unopened, intending to read it at her leisure. She would have forgotten
it altogether but for a second note which came two days later,
requesting some acknowledgment of the previous communication. On
learning the truth she immediately drove to Moncrief House, and there
abused the doctor as he had never been abused in his life before; after
which she begged his