SHOT THE DOG?

A shot! a yell! silence!

Such, as soon as I could collect myself sufficiently to form an idea at
all, were my midnight sensations as I sat up in my bed, with my chin on
my knees, my hair on end, my body bedewed with cold perspiration, and my
limbs trembling from the tips of my fingers to the points of my toes.

I had been peacefully dreaming--something about an automatic machine
into which you might drop a Latin exercise and get it back faultlessly
construed and written out. I had, in fact, got to the point of
attempting nefariously to avail myself of its services. I had folded up
the fiendish exercise on the passive subjunctive which Plummer had set
us overnight, and was in the very act of consigning it to the mechanical
crib, when the shot and the yell projected me, all of a heap, out of
dreamland into the waking world.

At first I was convinced it must have been the sound of my exercise
falling into the machine, and Plummer's howl of indignation at finding
himself circumvented.

No! Machine and all had vanished, but the noises rang on in my waking
ears.

Was it thunder and storm? No. The pale moonlight poured in a gentle
flood through the window, and not a leaf stirred in the elms without.

Was it one of the fellows fallen out of bed? No. On every hand reigned
peaceful slumber. There was Dicky Brown in the next bed, flat on his
back, open-mouthed, snoring monotonously, like a muffled police rattle.
There was Graham minor on the other side, serenely wheezing up and down
the scale, like a kettle simmering on the hob. There opposite, among
the big boys, lay Faulkner, with the moonshine on his pale face, his
arms above his head, smirking even in his sleep. And there was Parkin
just beyond, with the sheet half throttling him, as usual, sprawling
diagonally across his bed, and a bare foot sticking out at the end. And
here lay--

Hullo! My eyes opened and my teeth chattered faster. Where _was_
Tempest? His bed was next to Parkin's, but it was empty. In the
moonlight and in the midst of my fright I could see his shirt and
waistcoat still dangling on the bed-post, while the coat and trousers
and slippers were gone. The bed itself was tumbled, and had evidently
been lain in; but the sleeper had apparently risen hurriedly, partly
dressed himself, and gone out.

If only I could have got my tongue loose from the roof of the mouth to
which it was cleaving, I should have yelled aloud at th