"Nerei repandirostrum incurvicervicum pecus."
A dingy, swashy, splashy afternoon in October; a school-yard filled with a mob of riotous boys. A lot of us standing outside.
Suddenly came a dull, crashing sound from the school-room. At the ominous interruption I shuddered involuntarily, and called to Smithsye:--"What's up, Smithums?"
"Guy's cleaning out the fourth form," he replied.
At the same moment George de Coverly passed me, holding his nose, from whence the bright Norman blood streamed redly. To him the plebeian Smithsye laughingly:--"Cully! how's his nibs?"
I pushed the door of the school-room open. There are some spectacles which a man never forgets. The burning of Troy probably seemed a large-sized conflagration to the pious Aeneas, and made an impression on him which he carried away with the feeble Anchises.
In the centre of the room, lightly brandishing the piston-rod of a steam-engine, stood Guy Heavystone alone. I say alone, for the pile of small boys on the floor in the corner could hardly be called company.
I will try and sketch him for the reader. Guy Heavystone was then only fifteen. His broad, deep chest, his sinewy and quivering flank, his straight pastern, showed him to be a thoroughbred.
Perhaps he was a trifle heavy in the fetlock, but he held his head haughtily erect. His eyes were glittering but pitiless. There was a sternness about the lower part of his face,--the old Heavystone look,--a sternness, heightened, perhaps, by the snaffle-bit which, in one of his strange freaks, he wore in his mouth to curb his occasional ferocity. His dress was well adapted to his square-set and herculean frame. A striped knit undershirt, close-fitting striped tights, and a few spangles set off his figure; a neat Glengarry cap adorned his head. On it was displayed the Heavystone crest, a cock regardant on a dunghill or, and the motto, "Devil a better!"
I thought of Horatius on the bridge, of Hector before the walls. I always make it a point to think of something classical at such times.
He saw me, and his sternness partly relaxed. Something like a smile struggled through his grim lineaments. It was like looking on the Jungfrau after having seen Mont Blanc,--a trifle, only a trifle less sublime and awful. Resting his hand lightly on the shoulder of the head-master, who shuddered and collapsed under his touch, he strode toward me.
His walk was peculiar. You could not call it a stride. It was like the "crest-tossing Bellerophon,"--a kind of prancing gait.
Guy Heavystone pranced toward me.
