bindings in the bookshelf. Another quoited along the writing-table.
Beetle made zealous feint to stop it, and in that endeavor overturned
a student's lamp, which dripped, _via_ King's papers and some choice
books, greasily on to a Persian rug. There was much broken glass on
the window-seat; the china basket--McTurk's aversion--cracked to
flinders, had dropped her musk plant and its earth over the red rep
cushions; Manders minor was bleeding profusely from a cut on the
cheek-bone; and King, using strange words, every one of which Beetle
treasured, ran forth to find the school-sergeant, that Rabbits-Eggs
might be instantly cast into jail.

"Poor chap!" said Beetle, with a false, feigned sympathy. "Let it
bleed a little. That'll prevent apoplexy," and he held the blind
head skilfully over the table, and the papers on the table, as he
guided the howling Manders to the door.

Then did Beetle, alone with the wreckage, return good for evil. How,
in that office, a complete set of "Gibbon" was scarred all along the
back as by a flint; how so much black and copying ink came to be
mingled with Manders's gore on the table-cloth; why the big
gum-bottle, unstoppered, had rolled semicircularly across the floor;
and in what manner the white china door-knob grew to be painted with
yet more of Manders's young blood, were matters which Beetle did not
explain when the rabid King returned to find him standing politely
over the reeking hearth-rug.

"You never told me to go, sir," he said, with the air of Casabianca,
and King consigned him to the outer darkness.

But it was to a boot-cupboard under the staircase on the ground floor