SCHOOL DAYS
old verger, who was sitting in his little den as of old, puzzling over hieroglyphics.
He looked up through his spectacles, as Tom seized his hand and wrung it.
"Ah! you've heard all about it, sir, I see," said he.
Tom nodded, and then sat down on the shoe-board, while the old man told his tale, and wiped his spectacles, and fairly flowed over with quaint, homely, honest sorrow.
By the time he had done, Tom felt much better.
"Where is he buried, Thomas?" said he, at last.
"Under the altar in the chapel, sir," answered Thomas. "You'd like to have the key, I dare say."
"Thank you, Thomas—yes, I should, very much." And the old man fumbled among his bunch, and then got up, as though he would go with him; but after a few steps stopped short, and said: "Perhaps you'd like to go by yourself, sir?"
Tom nodded, and the bunch of keys was handed to him, with an injunction to be sure and lock the door after him, and bring them back before eight o'clock.
He walked quickly through the quadrangle and out into the close. The longing which had been upon him and driven him thus far, like the gad-fly in the Greek legends, giving him no rest in mind or body, seemed all of a sudden not to be satisfied, but to shrivel up, and pall. "Why should I go on? It's no use," he thought, and threw himself at full length on the turf, and looked vaguely and listlessly at all the well-known objects. There were a few of the town boys playing cricket, their wicket pitched on the best piece in the middle of the big-side ground, a sin about equal to sacrilege in the eyes of a captain of the eleven. He was very nearly getting up to go and send them off. "Pshaw! they won't remember me. They've more right there than I," he muttered. And the thought that his sceptre had departed, and his mark was wearing out, came home to him for the first time, and bitterly enough. He was lying on the very spot where the fights came off;
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