He was wishing with all his heart that he had not seen something which
he had seen that day. He had been going through the cloisters in the
afternoon, about the time that all Helstonleigh, college boys included,
were in the streets watching for the sheriff's procession, when he saw
one of the seniors steal (Bywater had been happy in the epithet) out of
the cathedral into the quiet cloisters, peer about him, and then throw
a broken ink-bottle into the graveyard which the cloisters enclosed.
The boy stole away without perceiving Charley; and there sat Charley
now, trying to persuade himself by some ingenious sophistry--which,
however, he knew _was_ sophistry--that the senior might not have been
the one in the mischief; that the ink-bottle might have been on
legitimate duty, and that he threw it from him because it was broken.
Charles Channing did not like these unpleasant secrets. There was in
the school a code of honour--the boys called it so--that one should not
tell of another; and if the head-master ever went the length of calling
the seniors to his aid, those seniors deemed themselves compelled to
declare it, if the fault became known to them. Hence Tom Channing's
hasty arrest of his brother's words.
"I wonder if I could see the ink-bottle there?" quoth Charles to
himself. Rising from the books he ran through the cloisters to a
certain part, and there, by a dexterous spring, perched himself on to
the frame of the open mullioned windows.
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