The Human Boy

tuff it in the face of the whole school, and nearly got expelled. Freckles was so called owing to his skin, which was simply a complicated pattern much like what you can see in any

8Sydney, and his grandfather was one of the last people to be transported to Botany Bay through no fault of his own. After he had been on a convict ship five years a chap at home confessed on his death-bed that he had done the thing Ma

uiet way every Saturday afternoon, making it a rule to go out of bounds always. His get-up was fine. My name is Tomkins, called "Nubby" because I happen to have a rather large sort of nose, and, being fond of the country and not keen on games, Maine rather took to me, and after I had sworn on crossed knives not to say a word to a soul (which I never did till Freckles left) he told me his secrets and showed me his things. If you'd seen Freckles starting for an excursion you wouldn't have said there was anything remarkable about him; but really he was armed to the teeth, and had everything a bushranger would be likely to want in a quiet place like Merivale. Down his leg was the barrel of an air-gun, strong enough to kill any small thing like a

hen he was out of danger, he would get away behind a woodstack or under banks of a stre

lmet Ned Kelly, the King of the Bushrangers, used to wear, but it was not bullet-proof, but only used 51for a disguise. We were in the same dormitory,

nging on a half-holiday in winter. "I sha'n't run my usual frightful risks with you," he said, "because I might have to open fire to save you,

hed out and gummed on cardboard; but I had no weap

into some dead bracken, and squatted down and 52put on his mask. I also put on mine. Then he fastened his air-gun together and loaded it, and told me to walk six paces behind him and do as he did.

ng, that he might hear if anybody had been attracted by the sound. It was a well-known bushman's dodge. Once we saw a keeper through a clearing, and Freckles lay flat on his stomac

he had set a week before. He 53was collecting skins for a mole-skin waistcoat, but he said skinning moles was one of the beastliest

, and Freckles stalked them through the fern while I waited motionless, and finally he shot

the time I take a meal," he said, "and that's a pa

hich must have been true, for there were an awful lot of pheasants calling in the glades. But Freckles got

eed and drink in safety; but you mustn't talk or I sha'n

et down his gun, and li

t off his hind-legs whi

right through. He ate and drank with his ears straining for every sound. Then he took t

away, and the keepers would doubtless lie in wait for me and catch me red-handed. You can't b

ight of rabbit pretty well ever since, but Freckles said the

. Frenchy, as we called him, was Monsieur Michel. He didn't belong entirely to Dunston's, but lived in Merivale and came to us three days a week, and went to

cried sometimes, and he told us his nerves were frightfully tricky, and often led him to be harsh when he didn't mean it. He couldn't keep order or make chaps work if they didn't choose; and Steggles, who had an awfully cunnin

such-like things. Freckles turned all colors, and then white, with a sort of bluish tint to his lips. He didn't say a word, but looked at Frenchy with such a frightful expression that I felt something would happen later. All that happened at the time was that Freckles got the eighth book of Telemachus to write out into French from English, and then correct by Fénelon, which was a pretty big job if a chap had been fool enough to try and do it; and Monsieur 57Michel went off to Merivale with a big card on his coat-tail w

I had a thing like this hanging over me unrevenged. It's the frightfulest

week to settle what to do, and

us, and offered him as classy a knife, with a corkscrew and other things, including tweezers, as ever you saw--just the k

knife; and the imposition is half done,

away. Then Frenchy sighed, and looked round to see who should have the knife, and didn't seem to see anybody in particular, and left it

ed the knife was another insult. Then he e

s not to 59be obliged to him for anyt

m up--how

erivale through the woods, as you know, and now he's up here on Friday nights coaching Slade and Betterton for their army exam. Afterwards he has supper with Mr. Thompson or the Doctor.

said. "You might get years

d I'm going to next Friday night. I've often got out of the dormitory and be

front door of Dunston's, and looking out we could see a stretcher and something on it. That something was actually Freckles, though the few chaps who knew what was going

two laboring men had brought him ba

cause they must be better than a chap's who wasn't there. He seemed frightfully down in the mouth, and said that he could never look fe

chy to start with. And that's just what I did do, only I dropped wrong, and came down pretty nearly on my head owing to slipping somehow at the start. What did exactly happen to me as I left the tree I never shall know. Anyway, Frenchy came along sure enough, and I dropped, and he jumped I should think fully a yard in the air; but that was all, because in falling I hit a big root (it was a beech-tree), and went and broke something in my ankle and some

e!' he said. 'Speak, child, wh

somehow I went off, I suppose, though it wasn't for long. When I came to he was gone, but he rushed back in a minute with that rotten old top-hat he wears full of water he'd got from

my you've got in the world, and if I hadn't fallen down at a critical moment an

bes for succor'; but I told him not to. I began to get a rum hot pain in my side th

u wanted to pass it off with a knife with a corkscrew and tweezers in it. But you couldn't expect me to take

r about a week it seemed, he went. But I heard him shouting and yelling French yells in the woods, and after a bit he came back with two men and a hurdle. They presently took me back, 64and what Frenchy's said since to the Doctor I don't know. In fact, I didn't know anything for days. Anyway, I've had nothing but a mild rowing and very good grub, an

's all right, but wh

cked out of me. If a chap can't so much as fall out of a tree on a wanderer'

ebody else of a different turn of mind, he might have

it is, I expect months, perhaps years, will have to go by before I feel to hank

" I a

le to manage it. He told me all this, little knowing my father was extremely rich. Well, you see, the mater wants somebody French for the kids at home, which are girls, and, knowing Frenchy bars this climate, I think Australia might do him good. He's fifty-three years ol

with me one half-holiday to see the place where he was smashed up. The bough was a frightful high o

"that's the best thing I'

t," I said, "especially as the b

but the wretched branch broke, and that is jolly different. That wasn't my fault. The most hardened old hand must have come down then. In fact,

as soon as he could run a mile without stopping. And we found his lead mask, like Ned Kelly's

e girls of Freckles's father. Anyway, he went, and he cried when he said good-bye to the school; and Freckles told me that when he said good-bye to him he yelled with crying, and

, being now fourteen and apparently having less sense than when he left Australia, had better return to his native land, and go into the wool business, and begin life as an office-boy in his place of business. Freckles told me that chaps in his father's office generally got a fortnight's holiday, but that his mother would probably work up his governor to give him th

ype="