CHAPTER XVII.

EXECUTING A SENTENCE.

“We must convene a Chapter and degrade him.”

They had scarcely reached the outskirts of Playden, when Jack made this thrilling announcement. He was perched on the upper bar of a style in the middle of the field leading to Gaybrook, and his tone was as decided and as impressive as the occasion demanded.

“Of course we must,” agreed Phil, tweaking Hubert, significantly.

“Of course we must,” said Andrew’s valet, in response to the tweak.

Andrew, meanwhile, the person to be degraded, was walking ahead in solitary sulkiness.

“He ought never to have been made a knight, he’s not got anything knightly in him,” said Phil, “if he’s kept in the Order at all, he ought to be made to rank below Gaston.”

“But the fact is,” said Jack, “he oughtn’t to be kept in at all. It’s the second time that he’s behaved like a sneak, and made fools of us.”

“But, boys,” began Faith, “you must remember that Andrew has never been to school.”

“No fear of our forgetting that, Grannie Faith,” retorted Phil; whilst Di added: “But you know if you turn him out the Order will be a very small one.”

“Yes,” said Phoena, “but we want quality, not quantity.”

But though the boys applauded this remark, they nevertheless felt that there was something, too, to be said for Di’s argument.

“Go on, you girls,” said Jack, “we must discuss this by ourselves.”

“I do wonder how they’ll settle it,” said Fay, who was sorely divided in her mind as to which course would prove best to produce peace and concord. She would have been far more troubled had she guessed the resolution regarding the punishment to be inflicted on Andrew which had been decided upon.

“The execution of the sentence must take place after dinner,” Jack had ruled, “and in the meanwhile none of us must cast so much as a single glance at the renegade knight, commonly known as Andrew Durand.”

And so rigorously did they all obey this command, that when after dinner all the boys disappeared, leaving Andrew alone, he was so tired of being sent to Coventry, that he quite hailed Hubert’s return as the bearer of a formal citation. This was to summon him to appear before his co-knights to answer certain charges against him.

“What do you mean, you little donkey?” cried Andrew, impatiently, as Hubert was conscientiously but laboriously delivering himself of his errand, “I was just going out butterfly hunting, and I can’t stop here for ever listening to your rotten message.”

“You’ve got to come down to the river-meadow,” said Hubert, punctuating each word with a nod of his head, “and if you don’t come _dreckly_ they’ll come and fetch you.”

“I shall come when it suits me,” was Andrew’s reply.

“He’s trying to be cock-lofty,” was Hubert’s report to those who sent him, “but I believe he is coming all the same.”

“He’d better,” said his judges, “now young uns, remember your duty.”

“Yes,” said those “young uns,” cheerfully. But in truth, Hubert was secretly quaking with fear; whilst as to Gaston, nothing but the terror of being jeered at as a “French froggy” kept him from running away.

Accustomed to the intense stillness of his grandmother’s house, these continual fights and rumours of fights not only bewildered him, they were utterly distasteful to him. But, now he felt that his honour as a Frenchman was at stake, and stay he must.

“Behold the recreant knight,” cried Jack, as Andrew approached.

“What a pity,” said Phil, “that we couldn’t kodak the scene, it’s bound to be thrilling.”

The spot selected for this rather original court of justice was certainly a very pretty one. Jack, the president, had taken up his position against the trunk of a huge willow tree, whose silver-coated branches swept the surface of the river, which gave its name to the low-lying meadows. An old meal tub, reversed, supplied Jack’s seat, whilst a conveniently forked branch on either side of him furnished admirable perches for his two aides-de-camp, Hubert and Gaston. Gaston had selected the safest branch, whilst Hubert, with great glee, had clambered into the fork of the bough which hung so immediately over the water, that his dangling toes just swept the rippling wavelets. Phil apparently combined the offices of prosecutor, witness, and jury in the oncoming trial.

Feeling secretly much alarmed, Andrew presented himself before the court.

“Look sharp and say what you want,” he said, “I’m going after butterflies.”

“We must ask the butterflies to excuse your attendance to-day,” said Jack.

“And I shall want you, Hubert, to carry my net,” went on Andrew, ignoring Jack’s last speech.

“Wish you may get him,” said Phil, whilst Jack added:

“Now look here, Andrew, we’ve been discussing what happened this morning and what happened the day before yesterday, and we’ve decided that on each occasion you behaved like a horrid sneak and a coward. If you were one of our fellows at school you’d get a jolly good licking. As it is, we’re going to kick you out of our number.”

“Yes, we’re not going to let you join in anything again,” said Phil.

“I don’t mean to have anything more to do with any of you,” said Andrew, “I was on my way to tell you so.”

“Oh! you thought that you were going to sneak out of your rightful punishment that way, did you?” cried Phil; “pretty joke that.”

“Hm! you won’t find that so easy,” said Jack; “when soldiers and sailors are dismissed from Her Majesty’s service they don’t exactly take up their hats and say ‘Good-day’ to their superior officers, and stroll off as if they were going to a picnic. The law takes a little personal notice of them first, you know, just as we are going to pay a little special attention to you now. Hm!” and Jack cleared his throat significantly.

At this signal, which had been settled before, Hubert and Gaston descended from their perches and stood at attention on either side of the accused, and facing Jack.

“Keep your distance, you two grinning apes,” cried Andrew; “look out, you frog, or it will be the worse for you,” he added, giving a poke in the ribs to Hubert, and a pinch to Gaston’s arm.

But the proud position in which they found themselves rendered both small boys impervious to their injuries.

“Therefore we have decided,” pursued Jack, “to allow you your choice of two alternatives; by accepting either, you will have a chance of paying the penalty for your cowardly behaviour, and thus redeeming your reputation.”

“I’m not a coward, and I’ve not behaved as one,” said Andrew.

“O-oh!” came in a prolonged whoop from the assembled audience, “don’t you call it cowardly to knock down a wretched cripple, and then kick at him when he’s down? Don’t you call it cowardly to spring out on a chap in the dark, and hit him in the back, eh?”

“It was all done by mistake, I didn’t mean to do it,” said Andrew.

“Oh! all right then, you’re prepared to come along with us now, are you, this very moment, to Playden, and apologise like a man and a gentleman to the miserable Aaron? Look here, we’ll come with you, so that you shan’t run a chance of being paid out by them.”

“But with people of that sort,” said Phil, “an apology is only half the battle; you’ll have to stump up that half-crown you’ve got stowed away somewhere.”

“A likely story,” cried Andrew; “I’m not going near that cobbler’s den again, I can tell you.”

“If you’re not the very biggest cad that ever breathed, you _will_,” said Phil; “why, when we had a row with some street cads at school, and one poor chap got his tooth knocked out, we all clubbed and gave him five shillings, just because we were gentlemen and he was a cad.”

“I don’t care a mouldy rat,” replied Andrew, “whether you knock out a gutter-scraper’s teeth or your own, but you won’t find me fagging over to Playden, it’s not good enough.”

“He’s werry cheeky,” exclaimed Hubert, who was genuinely amazed at such open defiance on Andrew’s part.

A sudden blow from Andrew sent him sprawling his full length on the ground, and thus the formal character of the proceedings was entirely dissipated. Before Hubert could find his feet again, Phil and Jack had fallen upon Andrew, and a tremendous struggle ensued.

“Now, I say,” cried Jack, who was the first to get breath to express his views on the aspect of affairs, “Andrew deserves a ducking.”

“And the sooner he gets it the better,” said Phil.

“Shut up, will you,” shouted Andrew, who, feeling himself powerless in the hands of the schoolboys, with Hubert and Gaston as their helpers, was really alarmed; “Shut up, will you? I’m not a bit afraid for myself, but you’ll find it rather poor fun, I can tell you, to drown a chap.”

“Poor fun, do you think so? Wait and see,” said Phil; “besides, if you behave yourself, we _may_ just stop short of drowning you; give you a chance, at any rate, of seeing what a really good ducking will do for you.”

“And it shall be a ducking and a half, you bet,” said Jack, cheerfully. “Come on, you fellows,” he added, and having finished tying Andrew’s hands and feet together, Jack gave him the first decisive shove towards the stream.

It was a very shallow one, you know, measuring about twelve feet across from bank to bank, and hardly deep enough at the point where the willow grew to reach Gaston’s elbow standing upright, but Andrew’s terror of water in any shape was only equal to his fear of cows, so that the prospect of being thrust head foremost into the river made him wild.

“Better behave pretty,” jeered Phil. “Why, you’re wriggling like one of your miserable butterflies when you stick a pin through them. You are always so sure they’re enjoying it, try and enjoy this too.”

“I’m fa--ain--ting,” whined Andrew; “the doctor would----”

“Order cold water like a shot for you,” rejoined Jack. “Now then, boys!”

“Look your last, Andrew, at the pretty green fields,” began Phil, helping in the gentle propelling of Andrew into the stream, “and the bright blue sky, for here you are going, going, _going, gone_!”

“Now mind,” Jack had said at the beginning of the business; “we must not really let go of this precious specimen, for it would never do to let Miss Annie really get a wetting. We’ll only duck his head a couple of times under the water, to give him a bit of a fright.”

But when boys are bent on tormenting each other it is not always easy to stop short at the precise point at which they had intended to limit their operations, and so, thanks to Andrew’s struggles partly, and partly to the temptation that the other boys felt to keep up the idea that their luckless victim was in real bodily danger, the exploit ended in the whole party rolling into the river together. The water was so shallow, and their plight was so ludicrous, and apparently so little harm was done to anyone, that even the little boys laughed heartily.

“We’ve got a bit of a ducking,” said Jack, whose first thought had been for Hubert and Gaston, “but we’ll soon dry in this broiling sun.”

“On the whole, it has been quite refreshing,” laughed Phil.

“Werry much so,” chimed in the little boys. But Gaston’s teeth were chattering from the shock of his sudden immersion into the Gay.

Andrew, standing dripping from head to foot, said nothing.

“And will he go back to his kind sister Faith, and show her his little wet jacket?” jeered Phil, as Andrew presently moved off.

“Look here, old chap,” cried Jack, good-naturedly, “do like us. Put your jacket here to dry in the sun. This bit of grass is as good as a hot plate any day,” and he pointed to a sun-baked patch where the younger boys’ garments were already spread out, “and we none of us got wet to the skin.”

“Yes, give us your jacket,” said Phil.

But Andrew, turning a deaf ear, marched off across the fields, but not to the farm.