‘I say, Julia, my dear, I say, do you know . . .’

And Temple on the other:  ’ Miss Julia, I wish you’d let me tell you—­’

We longed to arouse her pity for Heriot at the moment she was admiring him, but she checked us, and as she was surrounded by ladies and gentlemen of the town, and particular friends of hers, we could not speak out.  Heriot brought his bat to the booth for eighty-nine runs.  His sleeve happened to be unbuttoned, and there, on his arm, was a mark of the cane.

‘Look!’ I said to Julia.  But she looked at me.

‘Richie, are you ill?’

She assured me I was very pale, and I felt her trembling excessively, and her parasol was covering us.

‘Here, Roy, Temple,’ we heard Heriot call; ’here, come here and bowl to me.’

I went and bowled till I thought my head was flying after the ball and getting knocks, it swam and throbbed so horribly.

Temple related that I fell, and was carried all the way from the cricket-field home by Heriot, who would not give me up to the usher.  I was in Julia’s charge three days.  Every time I spoke of her father and Heriot, she cried, ‘Oh, hush!’ and had tears on her eyelids.  When I was quite strong again, I made her hear me out.  She held me and rocked over me like a green tree in the wind and rain.

‘Was any name mentioned?’ she asked, with her mouth working, and to my ‘No,’ said ‘No, she knew there was none,’ and seemed to drink and choke, and was one minute calm, all but a trembling hanging underlip, next smiling on me, and next having her face carved in grimaces by the jerking little tugs of her mouth, which I disliked to see, for she would say nothing of what she thought of Heriot, and I thought to myself, though I forbore to speak unkindly, ’It’s no use your making yourself look ugly, Julia.’  If she had talked of Heriot, I should have thought that crying persons’ kisses were agreeable.

On my return into the school, I found it in a convulsion of excitement, owing to Heriot’s sending Boddy a challenge to fight a duel with pistols.  Mr. Rippenger preached a sermon to the boys concerning the unChristian spirit and hideous moral perversity of one who would even consent to fight a duel.  How much more reprehensible, then, was one that could bring himself to defy a fellow-creature to mortal combat!  We were not of his opinion; and as these questions are carried by majorities, we decided that Boddy was a coward, and approved the idea that Heriot would have to shoot or scourge him when the holidays came.  Mr. Rippenger concluded his observations by remarking that the sharpest punishment he could inflict upon Heriot was to leave him to his own conscience; which he did for three days, and then asked him if he was in a fit state of mind to beg Mr. Boddy’s pardon publicly.

‘I’m quite prepared to tell him what I think of him publicly, sir,’ said Heriot.

A murmur of exultation passed through the school.  Mr. Rippenger seized little Temple, and flogged him.  Far from dreading the rod, now that Heriot and Temple had tasted it, I thought of punishment as a mad pleasure, not a bit more awful than the burning furze-bush plunged into by our fellows in a follow-my-leader scamper on the common; so I caught Temple’s hand as he went by me, and said, eagerly, ’Shall I sing out hurrah?’