the silly tree: and then he wanted to know why I put it down, and I had
to say something or other. And after that he left off talking about it,
and asked me how long I'd been here, and where my people lived, and
things like that: and then I came away: but he wasn't looking a bit
well."

'I don't remember any more that was said by either of us about this. Next
day McLeod took to his bed with a chill or something of the kind, and it
was a week or more before he was in school again. And as much as a month
went by without anything happening that was noticeable. Whether or not Mr
Sampson was really startled, as McLeod had thought, he didn't show it. I
am pretty sure, of course, now, that there was something very curious in
his past history, but I'm not going to pretend that we boys were sharp
enough to guess any such thing.

'There was one other incident of the same kind as the last which I told
you. Several times since that day we had had to make up examples in
school to illustrate different rules, but there had never been any row
except when we did them wrong. At last there came a day when we were
going through those dismal things which people call Conditional
Sentences, and we were told to make a conditional sentence, expressing a
future consequence. We did it, right or wrong, and showed up our bits of
paper, and Sampson began looking through them. All at once he got up,
made some odd sort of noise in his throat, and rushed out by a door that
was just by his desk. We sat there for a minute or two, and then--I
suppose it was incorrect--but we went up, I and one or two others, to
look at the papers on his desk. Of course I thought someone must have put
down some nonsense or other, and Sampson had gone off to report him. All
the same, I noticed that he hadn't taken any of the papers with him when
he ran out. Well, the top paper on the desk was written in red ink--which