This attractive though violent animal lurked in a hutch artfully concealed between the roof and the rafters at the far end of the dormitory where Killigrew slept.  A trap door gave admission to the dim three-cornered place where heads had to be bowed for fear of the beams and voices and footsteps tuned down as low as possible lest someone in authority should overhear.  For the badger was contraband, or so its owner, for greater glory, chose to assume, though as a matter of fact it was more than likely had permission been asked to keep the beast it would have been accorded, for St. Renny had its reputation as the great naturalists’ school to keep up.  Half the glamour surrounding the savage pet would have vanished, however, and the secret was jealously guarded, the badger himself, by his unconquerable stench, being the only person likely to give it away.  Luckily the hutch was not directly over the dormitory, but right at the angle of the roof, where a low window, kept always open by Killigrew, allowed the worst of the smell to be wafted away.  The increasing size of the badger and its consequent fierceness were likely to make its ultimate retention impossible; even now, a mere ball of striped fluff, it bit savagely whenever it was handled.

Badgers, which are often erroneously supposed to be nearly extinct in England, swarm over Cornwall, so that Killigrew’s specimen did not enjoy any special distinction as a rarity, save in its capacity as a “pet.”  They are, however, very difficult to catch, being strong and cunning and armed with terrific teeth and claws, and Killigrew was passionately attached to his unyielding prisoner, not so much for its own sake as for what it represented for him—­outlawry, romance, the touch of the wild which glorified life.  Not on the first day was Ishmael accounted worthy, or even safe, as a repository for this secret, but when Killigrew did show it him, Ishmael rose in importance through his intimate knowledge of badgers and their ways.

“Wouldn’t He let you keep it if He knew?” asked Ishmael, when, finger and thumb round its neck and another finger firmly gripping under a forepaw, he had held and admired the spitting animal.

“Rather not.  We’re not allowed to keep anything, though they make us sweat across the moor what they call ’observing the animal creation in its own haunts.’  They like one to grind over beastesses and butterflies and suchlike.”

“I know a lot about them,” boasted Ishmael.

“Then you’d better keep your mouth shut about it, that’s all I can say, or the fellows will think you’re a prig.  It was all right when it was started because the fellows were keen on it themselves, but then the masters took it up, and of course we had to drop it.  We’re off bugs in this shop.”

Ishmael digested in silence the profundity of the point of view thus presented to him, and, according to his habit, quickly made it part of his practice.  For his first weeks at school he kept very silent, absorbing its traditions and the unwritten laws made by the boys themselves, on the nice observance of which hung respect and popularity.