look, and was always
saying, "Hush!" and putting his hands to his ears. The boys were not
long in finding out this nervous weakness, of course. In less than a
week a regular system of torments was inaugurated, full of the most
diabolical malice and ingenuity. The exercises of the conspirators
varied from day to day, but consisted mainly of foot-scraping, solos on
the slate-pencil, (making it _screech_ on the slate,) falling of heavy
books, attacks of coughing, banging of desk-lids, boot-creaking, with
sounds as of drawing a cork from time to time, followed by suppressed
chuckles.

Master Pigeon grew worse and worse under these inflictions. The rascally
boys always had an excuse for any one trick they were caught at.
"Couldn' help coughin', Sir." "Slipped out o' m' han', Sir." "Didn' go
to, Sir." "Didn' dew 't o' purpose, Sir." And so on,--always the best of
reasons for the most outrageous of behavior. The master weighed himself
at the grocer's on a platform-balance, some ten days after he began
keeping the school. At the end of a week he weighed himself again. He
had lost two pounds. At the end of another week he had lost five. He
made a little calculation, based on these data, from which he learned
that in a certain number of months, going on at this rate, he should
come to weigh precisely nothing at all; and as this was a sum in
subtraction he did not care to work out in practice, Master Pigeon took
to himself wings and left the school-committee in possession of a letter
of resignation and a vacant place to fill once more.

This was the school to which Mr. Bernard Langdon found himself appointed
as master. He accepted the place conditionally, with the understanding
that he should leave it at the end of a month, if he were tired of it.

The advent of Master Langdon to Pigwacket Centre created a much more
lively sensation than had attended that of either of his predecessors.
Looks go a good ways all the world over, and though there were several
good-looking people in the place, and Major Bush was what the natives of
the town called a "hahnsome mahn," that is, big, fat, and red, yet the
sight of a really elegant young fellow, with the natural air which grows
up with carefully-bred young persons, was a novelty. The Brahmin blood
which came from his grandfather as well as from his mother, a direct
descendant of the old Flynt family, well known by the famous tutor,
Henry Flynt, (see Cat. Harv. Anno 1693,) had been enliven